A Very Eventful Day
Marco:
I have something that makes me a little uncomfortable to report to you at this moment.
Casey:
Now I'm uncomfortable.
Casey:
I don't know if I want to know.
Casey:
There's no water in my closet.
Marco:
Yeah, right?
Marco:
No, there's five gallons.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
Different closet on the floor.
Marco:
But no, I actually have been for the last day or so kind of enjoying the fine woven case.
Casey:
You know, I don't have a problem with that.
Casey:
I would say I actively disliked it, but it wasn't the visceral hatred that everyone else has.
Casey:
I thought it was fine.
Casey:
And it's woven.
Casey:
And it's woven.
Casey:
But it's certainly not worth the $60 price tag to me.
Casey:
But I would say that's a lukewarm take.
Casey:
I don't think that's a hot take.
Marco:
I do have the issue.
Marco:
First of all, I'm loving the USB-C lifestyle with these new phones.
Marco:
Especially because I upgraded my phone and Tiff's phone at the same time, and our kid doesn't have a phone yet, so that's the whole family.
Casey:
You and I are living the best life.
Marco:
Yeah, so it's great.
Marco:
So we were able to get rid of almost every lightning cable in almost every place that we had one.
Marco:
Cars, all the different charging locations around the house.
John:
What about when you have to charge your mouse?
Marco:
So here's the problem, right?
Marco:
So basically, I think I'm only going to really need a lightning cable at my desk.
Marco:
i've already like re like moved some things like the way i the way i use my laptop as a desktop i have one cable that comes down and out front from the uh from the display and that has always been my like desk iphone cable for when i have to plug in my phone for xcode or whatever and that's always been lightning and that would also then you know occasionally i would unplug it from the phone and charge up the trackpad and the mouse that i have here both of which need lightning right right right
Marco:
Well, now I just replaced that cable with a USB 3.0 or 3.1 Gen 2x2 Xbox Series S, X1, whatever the heck the modern USB cables are called.
Marco:
Right, right, right.
Marco:
So now I have this problem where now I have, like, my ports are full.
Marco:
I want to charge stuff on my desk sometimes.
Marco:
So I guess I'm going to have to, like, get either, like, one of those little...
Marco:
usbc to lightning hats for the cable or i guess just have a separate lightning cable somewhere for my unsightly keyboard and mouse charging or trackpad and mouse charging at some point anyway all this is to say this arrangement was great until i tried to plug in this usbc 3.0 qr qrst uv cable into my phone through the fine woven case hole and it does not fit
Casey:
Oh, no.
Casey:
Oh, no.
Casey:
That's no good.
Casey:
That's not fun yet.
Casey:
So I'm jumping ahead, actually.
Casey:
But I guess I'll tease instead.
Casey:
I'll be professional podcasters and I'll tease that I finally have committed to semi begrudgingly a case on my phone.
Casey:
And the USB-C hole is quite large.
Casey:
And I am quite happy with that particular portion of the case.
Casey:
Also, I should point out that, speaking of earlier Craig Hockenberry, he has found some sort of Medusa multi-headed cable that he swears by.
Casey:
I don't think I'll be able to find it for the show notes, but if somebody points me to it, I will link it in the show notes even retroactively.
Casey:
But there's some Medusa thing that he swears by that apparently is very good.
John:
There are a bunch of them, but I don't understand how anybody can tolerate them because it is the definition of untidy cable mess.
John:
There is no way to use it tidily because you will only plug in one of those cables.
John:
And the other ones are just going to be dangling out there at right angles, wiggling all around, getting in the way, clacking into your screen.
John:
It's just soap.
John:
It's like, do not want.
John:
Do not want.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Also, those multi-head or adaptable cables tend to only be USB 2.
Marco:
And if I'm going to have USB 2 speeds, I might as well use Apple's nice little woven cable the phone came with.
Marco:
So that's probably what I'm going to end up doing, just tolerate the lower speeds, or go back to caseless, or get a case with a bigger USB-C hole, but...
Marco:
Anyway, I understand the fine woven case better now with some time.
Marco:
I was honestly I was going to return it and I missed the return window.
Marco:
So I'm stuck with it now.
Marco:
And so I decided let me actually try to use it.
Marco:
And when I compare it to the Peak Design case, by the way, follow up on that.
Marco:
The thing we talked about last week about Peak Design and possibly like kind of recalling their cases or like, you know, issuing free replacements.
Marco:
They apparently are actually going to do that, that there's been a little more concrete statements from them on that since then.
Marco:
So they're that's apparently going to happen.
Marco:
And that's awesome.
Marco:
Anyway, I've been kind of switching off between the Peak Design case, the fine woven and my and just no case.
Marco:
And I love the way the phone feels caseless.
Marco:
I love the way it feels with the Peak Design case a little bit more than with the Fine Woven, but the Peak Design case has worse buttons and is heavier and bigger.
Marco:
And so the Fine Woven actually provides, you know, some protection.
Marco:
But it's really thin and light compared to the bigger Peak Design case, because it's more made for a more rugged lifestyle than I actually lead.
Marco:
But if I'm going to have a case at all, which I think I'm still going to go back and forth on, but if I'm going to have a case at all, the fine movement, I think, is actually...
Marco:
It fits my needs better than I expected it to, as long as I never mess up the back.
Marco:
But as previously stated, I never look at the back of my phone.
Marco:
So maybe I just won't know or won't care once I finally do mess up this wonderful fine texture.
Marco:
But so far, it's actually not as bad as I thought it would be.
Casey:
That's a very, very ringing endorsement.
Casey:
You could say it's, as we've said before, the ultra-fine woven case.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Also, kind of just as a curiosity, I decided to weigh and measure the phone with the Peak Design case and with the fine woven.
Marco:
When I add the Peak Design case to the 15 Pro, it makes it almost the size and weight of the Pro Max.
Marco:
Cases add a decent amount of bulk, and you don't often think about it, but when you're talking about the difference between the phones being not that much size and not that many grams anymore, cases can actually jump that difference for you.
Marco:
So I've been really enjoying using the phone caseless because it feels so good in the hand, and it is so much lighter.
Marco:
When I add the Peak Design case to it, it actually makes it substantial, like, noticeably bigger and heavier.
Marco:
And it doesn't make it feel, like, you know, impossible or anything.
Marco:
But you do really notice that bulk.
Marco:
Whereas the Fine Woven case is kind of in the middle.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
You don't not notice it, but it's substantially more palatable and doesn't feel like you're ruining the gains we've made with this phone generation as much as the Peak Design case.
Marco:
So that's why I think if I'm going to have a case at all, which is still up for debate, but if I'm going to have a case at all, I think the fine woven or something else that's thin and light might be the better move.
John:
What are you going to do about the fact that you can't plug in the cable?
Marco:
Probably going to either take a Dremel to it and hope for the best, or I really shouldn't do that because I would mess it up.
John:
You can get a cable that'll fit.
John:
You just have to shop based on the size of the connector.
Marco:
I know.
Marco:
I was trying to have all the same cables.
Marco:
I wanted...
Marco:
I had this grand goal of like, all right, I'm going to have all of my charging USB-C cables be white.
Marco:
Because I have these wonderful Anker ones that I really like that are super flexible and nice.
Marco:
Like, all right, I'm going to have all the charging USB-Cs be white.
Marco:
And all the data ones be black.
Marco:
Oh, that's clever.
Marco:
So that way I can tell quickly, you know, does this cable support fast data or not?
Marco:
And so I figured these two cables out on Amazon that had good reviews or from good companies.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
so i'm already now it's already ruined like now i'm already gotta i already gotta throw away or move or reassign these black cables that i got to different roles and or get get a different one for my desk then i gotta keep it straight it's a whole thing so my all my plans are ruined did you order this before or after i told my story about the thing not fitting before i don't know that's what you get
Casey:
Buckle up, everyone, because we are going on a journey.
Casey:
John, what's going on?
John:
I think about six months ago on this program, I discussed the bug I was experiencing.
John:
I think I brought it up on the show because I had had a breakthrough at that point.
John:
I don't remember how old it is.
John:
My recollection is that
John:
uh either i had this breakthrough around uh mac os 13.3 or that's when i started noticing the bug but either way uh the bug is this uh sometimes i'll be dragging a window around and it will go like real slow like it's going through molasses like it's not keeping up with my cursor like i'll grab a window and i'll move it and my cursor will move an inch and the window will be like all right i'm coming i'll get there eventually
John:
And for a while, I'm like, oh, this is some kind of weird thing.
John:
I'll just restart and that'll fix it.
John:
And then the restarts were fixing it.
John:
And then eventually I figured out this bug only happens when I have more than one user logged into the computer.
John:
And I figured that out.
John:
It just occurred to me.
John:
I was like, why does it get fixed by restart?
John:
Well, when I restart, I just log into my account and there's only one account logged in.
John:
But eventually I go over to my wife's account, log into her account to go to the photo library.
John:
This was before iCloud showed photo library.
John:
But I still go over there because so much stuff isn't shared.
John:
Um, and yeah, eventually I would log into my wife's account and then the bug would happen and I figured it out.
John:
Okay.
John:
And I filed this with Apple and I was trying to, you know, I think actually I did file it before that and I thought it was something different.
John:
And then I'm like, okay, now I know what it is.
John:
Apple is easy for you to reproduce.
John:
You just got to log in with more than one user.
John:
Anyway, that was six months ago.
John:
And I mean, obviously no response on the bug report because obviously, um,
John:
But I was like, you know, this is still bothering me.
John:
When Sonoma betas were released, remember I said on the show, hey, I loaded the latest Sonoma beta and I think my bug is gone because I tried it on my Sonoma external disk that I boot from and I couldn't reproduce the bug anymore.
John:
And I said at the time, either they fixed it in Sonoma
John:
Or it's just because my Sonoma external boot disk was like a clean install, right?
John:
And I said, well, I'll find out which one of those things it is when Sonoma is released for Reelsy Reels.
John:
And I put it on my real, you know, my main boot drive.
John:
And so Sonoma was released.
John:
And after our last week's show, I did put it on my main boot drive.
John:
And the very first thing I did was logged into a second account and tested whether the bug is still there.
John:
And it was still there.
John:
And I said, no.
John:
I was so confident that it was going to be fixed because it was fixed in that beta.
John:
And I started to question everything.
John:
I'm like, was it really fixed in that beta?
John:
Or did I not notice that only one, was I really only logged in?
John:
But I'm pretty sure it was fixed.
John:
I don't understand.
John:
So anyway, I'm like, it's still there.
John:
It's still there in Sonoma.
John:
So now I'm going back into feedback and digging up my bug.
John:
And I'm like, yeah, there's still no activity on this bug.
John:
And it's still here.
John:
I had basically forgotten about it because I'm like, oh, it'll be fixed in Sonoma.
John:
I don't have to worry about it.
John:
But it's not.
John:
And so I just, I was stewing on it for a while.
John:
Eventually I decided, you know what?
John:
Every time I talk about YouTube, you're like, oh, there's some weird thing you got.
John:
It must be your Mac bro or whatever.
John:
You know, you make stupid jokes about it.
John:
That's how we sound.
John:
Yeah.
John:
You don't have this problem.
John:
And I don't hear about other people having the problem either.
John:
uh which is why you were like oh it must be an intel thing or must because you have a weird mac pro or you have such a strange setup or whatever so i'm like you know what this problem only shows up when you have at least three graphics cards in your computer yeah also yeah i'll get to that um actually even before that let me rewind a little once i found out that this happened in in uh in sonoma i'm like
John:
it must have been the fact that it was a clean install.
John:
Like I was still saying it didn't, you know, it was, it was fixing that cinema beta, but that was like booting off an external disc that had nothing on it.
John:
Right.
John:
So it must be some third party software or crufter crap.
John:
That's on my boot disc.
John:
It's doing it.
John:
And so I spent, I think I spent a couple of weeks just tearing third party software out of my Mac.
John:
Just, just everything.
John:
I had previously, when we discussed this, I'd ripped out all Adobe software because I thought it was that, but it wasn't.
John:
I,
John:
i purge adobe from my system didn't help but anyway i'm going through the light the slash library folder not tilde slash library but just plain old slash library because this bug is reproducible when you log into fresh accounts i have like these test one and test two accounts that have nothing in them on you know on my boot disk so like it's not tilde slash anything but slash library has lots of crap in it i'm i'm deleting the the you know unsanity window shade.ape files in my slash library directory stuff that predates your use of
John:
the mac probably you don't remember like my slash library i mean that stuff was inert it wasn't doing anything but i'm just removing everything i got to the point where i'm diffing my slash library against the slash library that's on the sonoma beta external drive say like what's you know recursive diff like what's what's what third party stuff is in here what could it possibly be right and then with the course of doing that i said well you know
John:
I don't really want to be diffing against the last Sonoma beta that's on my external disk.
John:
I should really update that external disk to the release version of Sonoma.
John:
Because what's the point?
John:
If I find out that something is different about the beta, that doesn't mean it's the same as the release, right?
John:
So I updated my external drive to Sonoma.
John:
I erased the disk.
John:
I just erased it entirely and put Sonoma release on it.
John:
And I made two test accounts that are not even logged into any kind of Apple IDs, test one and test two on that.
John:
And that's another thing.
John:
And when I did that, I booted into it.
John:
I'm like, now that I'm in here, let me just confirm that like on this clean install, it doesn't happen.
John:
And I tested it on the clean install and I was able to reproduce it.
John:
and that so i'm like oh maybe i was i was this actually fixed in a beta or was i wrong i don't understand how i could be wrong i was like i have plenty of experience with this bug but like was i really only logged into one account but anyway regardless of whether my memory is faulty or whatever sonoma release on a erased disk with two fresh user accounts that have nothing to do with my life or anything and are not signed into any apple ids reproducible oh my god
John:
that's when i started thinking about hardware and marco was making a joke it's like oh you got a weird mac pro blaze video cards in it right like i've got to do it i've got to i've got to open this machine up and start tearing stuff out of it oh my word because i want to simplify my machine so i was suspicious of the video cards too because hey it's like a video related you know it's a it's a graphical thing or you know and i do have two video cards in my mac pro one of them i use to drive my monitor the other one is essentially just there for compute which i rarely use
John:
I remember I talked about using it when I was, like, cracking a notes document with, you know, GPU-powered decryption things, and that was cool.
John:
But I'm like, no, I got to pull that out.
John:
So I pulled out my unused video card.
John:
So now there's just one video card in there.
John:
Didn't help.
John:
Still reproducible.
John:
That's when I took Mastodon, and I said, okay, Mastodon, there's got to be somebody out there who follows me who has a 2019 Mac Pro with the AMD Radeon Vega 2 video card.
John:
So someone who matches my config.
John:
And I wasn't even asking them to have Sonoma because I know this reproduced in Ventura as well.
John:
I said, does anyone out there have this configuration?
John:
Please look at this YouTube video.
John:
I recorded a new YouTube video to explain the bug.
John:
I narrated it with some terrible microphone, so it's awful.
John:
I'm sorry, but I will put a link in the show notes.
John:
Like, this is how you reproduce the bug.
John:
Wait, why did you not use your good microphones?
John:
yeah seriously the desk at that point had so much stuff on it that i wasn't it because it was it was a mess you know what it's it's it's easy ish to open this thing but it's a very big and very heavy computer and it's got cables attached to it you have to disconnect all those and there was just no room for me to bring the podcast microphone out it was a mess i had boxes down here because i'm putting away the video card back in its original box and everything like that's why whatever i don't of course you are you're gonna have the thing out of the computer for four minutes and you put it back in the original box i didn't put it back in it's up in the attic now
John:
oh okay yeah i mean i think it's better for cool it's better for cooling and you know i don't practically speaking i wasn't using that extra gpu compute power if i ever needed a hand i can put it back in anyway so i asked i asked on mastodon someone out there do you have the same config and then people like oh i've got one i'll try it or whatever you know i think the instructions in my video are adequate for anyone to reproduce it right
John:
and that began a very eventful day of me going back and forth on mastodon uh trying to figure this out here is where things turn so a bunch of people said oh i have a mac pro and i'll try it i was waiting for them you know whatever they're going to try today tomorrow whatever at one point friend of the show steve drought and smith said i can't reproduce on my m1 at all i would be curious to hear if it can repro on any intel machine or with any amd gpu
John:
you know what i've heard this from so many people like i can't reproduce this it must just be your weird setup or whatever uh then he continues what kind of mouse trackpad are you using and what screen resolution and my mind stuck on that first sentence what kind of mouse trackpad are you using like you know what i hadn't considered that at all at this point why would i but as soon as he said it something as my mind latched onto him said
John:
Oh my God.
John:
So I disconnected my mouse from my computer.
John:
I went over to my wife's computer.
John:
I took her mouse, which is a Logitech, old Logitech thing with a little like USB-A dongle thing.
John:
I brought it over to my computer, connected her mouse to my computer, could not reproduce the bug.
John:
So it's your old stupid mouse that's the problem.
John:
So I'm like, yeah.
John:
So I posted on this and I'm like, I cannot believe this.
John:
But it's my stupid Microsoft mouse that I've replaced once under warranty.
John:
It's the stupid mouse.
John:
I did have the hardware problem with the mouse.
John:
I got it replaced under warranty.
John:
And I had actually bought a backup of it.
John:
Remember, I like this mouse because I like the shape of it.
John:
I like how it feels.
John:
I like everything about it.
John:
But apparently, I'm like, it's the stupid mouse.
John:
It wasn't the operating system at all.
John:
That's why nobody can reproduce it.
John:
Because they don't have my stupid mouse.
John:
It's got to be the stupid mouse.
John:
I was like...
John:
I felt I was annoyed, but I felt an incredible amount of relief and the eureka moment seeing the bugs.
John:
I can't reproduce anymore.
John:
My wife's and she's got it's just an old crappy Logitech mouse.
John:
Nothing special about it.
John:
I can't reproduce it with her mouse.
John:
That must have been it.
John:
It must have been my mouse.
John:
But, you know, being a career programmer.
John:
I didn't let it go at that and say, I'm satisfied that I've solved this problem.
John:
Let me just close that feedback and say, never mind, Apple.
John:
It was my stupid mouse.
John:
You don't have to worry about it.
John:
I'm closing this feedback.
John:
I think I already made that mistake once when I closed this, but I thought it had been fixed.
John:
But anyway, I'm like, if it really is the mouse, this should be pretty easy to confirm.
John:
And so then over the course of the day, I did a long series of experiments.
John:
And it was a depressing series of experiments because I'm not going to go through it all.
John:
You can follow the threads on Mass.
John:
I don't know if you really want to.
John:
But it is a roller coaster.
John:
Lots of people are still finding the original.
John:
I'm like, oh, it's my mouse.
John:
They're like, ha, I'm glad you figured it out.
John:
I'm like, keep reading.
John:
Here's the deal with this bug.
John:
Has nothing to do with my Mac Pro.
John:
Has nothing to do with Intel.
John:
Also, kind of, sort of has something to do with my mouse, but not in the way that you think.
John:
Over the course of the day, many people were able to reproduce it, and based on their responses, I was able to reproduce it.
John:
Here are all the places and ways that I was able to reproduce it.
John:
I reproduced it on my Mac Pro, of course, in a clean install of Sonoma and in my regular install of
John:
and by the way on the clean install the reason i do that clean install is that installation has zero third-party software on it nothing no apps no nothing it does not have a shred of software from anybody other than apple on it and by design so everybody who was saying it must be a kernel extension or a logitech driver or whatever some people did say when you plug in the mouse it must download a driver from logitech i'm like
John:
I'm not sure about that.
John:
But anyway, I was able to reproduce it on my Intel MacBook Air running Ventura.
John:
I was able to reproduce it on my wife's Mac Studio, which is an M1 Max running Sonoma.
John:
I was able to reproduce it on all of those computers with the following mice.
John:
Logitech M705, Logitech MX Master 3, Logitech MX300, Microsoft Precision Mouse connected through USB and Bluetooth, and Apple Mighty Mouse.
John:
I was trying to find an Apple Mouse.
John:
surprisingly difficult in my attic i know where one is but i'm not getting it because my mac pro came with the apple mouse but it's it's never been opened and i'm not taking that out nobody in your house believes in the magic trackpad uh that's the thing i went let me i said let me go get my wife's old 5k iMac and i opened the box she bought that with a trackpad
John:
so it doesn't it didn't come with an apple mouse it came with an apple trackpad right um and it's not wasn't in the box you must have it somewhere or whatever anyway this is over the course of the day because at first i thought it's just my mouse my mouse is broken and then i'm like oh but it only happens on my mouse when connected through usb so it must be it must be a usb thing and not bluetooth but then i was able to reproduce it in bluetooth now here are the parameters here here the interesting part of this um so and that's the reason why this is this is still a legit apple bug but the reproduction parameters are interesting
John:
The quote-unquote easiest way to reproduce this is, of course, the way I saw it first.
John:
On my Mac Pro with my Microsoft mouse connected through USB, which is how I use it, that reproduces super easy.
John:
And the steps are basically make sure at least two users are logged in.
John:
uh what one of the users nothing nothing open on them just they don't have any apps open any windows open just nothing they're just logged in no third-party software on the second user open 25 windows any windows in any app doesn't matter what it is and then just grab any window and try to move it and you reproduce the bug and this is i try to make this clear in the video but like this is not about the system being overloaded
John:
hot runaway processes.
John:
The system is idle.
John:
Nothing is happening.
John:
Activity monitor before you begin dragging a window around shows nothing.
John:
0% everything.
John:
Nothing.
John:
Steve Trout and Smith actually made an app that just opens NS windows with nothing in them.
John:
As if, you know, if a text edit window isn't lightweight, it doesn't matter what the app is.
John:
Just a bunch of windows, right?
John:
So 25 windows.
John:
25 windows, complete idle system.
John:
No third-party software.
John:
No applications.
John:
No nothing.
John:
Nothing is running.
John:
25 windows.
John:
USB connected Microsoft precision mouse.
John:
on the far end of this spectrum is logitech mouse connected with their little rf dongle on an m1 max max studio you need about 200 windows to reproduce it there and all those different combinations that i said between all those different mice and all those different computers pretty much at every data point 25 50 like it's just a question of how many windows it takes
John:
What are the parameters there?
John:
A lot of people have theorized that it is the polling rate of the mouse and the higher the polling rate, the easier it is to reproduce.
John:
Certainly, it seems like the speed of the hardware might be a factor because the M1 Max Max Studio is obviously the fastest computer in the house.
John:
And that's the hardest to reproduce on because the Intel MacBook Air is slow and my Mac Pro is slow these days, too.
John:
As far as CPU stuff goes, not GPU.
John:
But basically, and other people are writing in and saying, I've got the magic mouse.
John:
I've got an Apple trackpad.
John:
Someone wrote in recently and said they were able to reproduce it using the built in trackpad.
John:
on their MacBook Pro.
John:
So this is an Apple bug.
John:
And the reason most people don't see it, yes, haha, because they don't open a lot of windows, but the combination that is the easiest to reproduce is with a mouse connected with a USB cable to an Intel Mac Pro.
Casey:
That's three people on the planet, Josh.
John:
Right, because how many people have Mac Pros?
John:
And if they do, how many people use a mouse instead of a trackpad?
John:
But how many use a wired mouse?
John:
It's even hard to find wired mice.
John:
And when my mouse is when this Microsoft mouse is connected through Bluetooth, I'm like, oh, it doesn't reproduce over Bluetooth.
John:
No, it's just harder.
John:
You just need to open more windows.
John:
And I think a Bluetooth, you know, the Microsoft precision mouse with Bluetooth on my Mac Pro was like 50 windows or 75 for reproduction.
John:
You'll look at the YouTube video.
John:
This is not one of those things where it's like, oh, it's hard to catch and it does it sometimes or whatever.
John:
It is 100% reproducible, trivially, instantaneously, always, all the time.
John:
It never doesn't do it.
John:
And it is super duper duper obvious.
John:
It's not subtle.
John:
It's not hard to see.
John:
It's not hard to reproduce.
John:
You don't need to do anything fancy.
John:
It's a three-step reproduction.
John:
So it was a long, depressing day where I thought I had figured, because I would have, you know, as much as it would annoy me if a mouse died, I would love to be rid of this bug and say, it's just my stupid mouse.
John:
Throw them out the window, buy a new mouse, look behind me, never look back.
John:
But no, it is a legit operating system bug of some kind.
John:
The bad part is that to reproduce on a modern computer with sort of the default Apple setup, which is like, you know, a non-wired mouse or trackpad and a modern computer, you do need a lot of windows, 100 to 200 depending.
John:
And Apple could look at that and say, OK, fine.
John:
So our window manager freaks out with 200 windows, but we don't care.
John:
And I'll say, but what about my computer that freaks out with 25 windows?
John:
And I spend most of my life with more than 25 windows, which is why I saw it immediately.
John:
Like, right now, I have way more than 25 windows open.
John:
I'm never at just 25 windows.
John:
What about my computer?
John:
Oh, just don't use the USB mouse.
John:
But I want to use the USB mouse.
John:
I like it better than Bluetooth.
John:
It's more reliable.
John:
I don't have to worry about charging.
John:
Ah.
John:
So, Apple folks, if you're listening, I know some people looked at this bug and they're like, they couldn't figure it out.
John:
But we, as a community, have collectively chased this bug down so far now.
John:
Like, how much more do you want?
John:
It's served up on a silver platter.
John:
Reproduction steps are literally three steps that now we've tested all these sorts of parameters.
John:
Like, you can do this, Apple.
John:
You can reproduce.
John:
I was going to ask you to, before you came on the show today, if you wanted to log into a second account so you could reproduce this without opening tons of windows.
John:
But guess what?
John:
You can reproduce it while only being logged into one account.
John:
That's how far we chase this down.
John:
And if you're only logged into one account, you guessed it, you got to open more windows, right?
John:
Like with two users logged in, you know, 25 windows will do it on Mac with one user logged in.
John:
i think it would probably take three or four hundred so obviously having the second user logged in makes it way way it's not linear it's not like it's not like you divide it by two or whatever but yeah some people especially i tried it on like my you know dinky intel macbook air you can reproduce it with one user logged in this is just a problem with the window manager right or something something having to do with dragging windows around uh combined with like the thing that checks for where the cursor is has some kind of terrible performance thing and
John:
this is new this started around mac os 13.3 ish i can't nail it down exactly uh this didn't happen in 12 11 10 or all the other versions so something changed something is broken apple needs to fix this i would love for something to happen related to this bug uh we'll put the number in the show notes if any apple folks are still listening it is fb 132 11706 i filed a new bug every time i find something new i file a new bug with a better title
John:
unfortunately this one was filed before i did all the stuff you just described there so the title is window dragging is laggy and jumping and more than one user logged in i don't know what i would call the new bug it would be like window dragging is laggy and jumping you and there are a lot of windows i mean i what what a what a terrible terrible ongoing journey
John:
I mean, now that the world knows about this, kind of, sort of, you two will probably never see it.
John:
But now that you know it exists, you may find yourself creeping up to it, like log into a second account, and you just may end up with enough windows open where you just hit that threshold and you'll be like, hmm.
John:
Because you might look at it and lots of people are saying, yeah, I have that too and my computer is overloaded.
John:
No, that's not it.
John:
That's a different thing.
John:
Your computer being overloaded is an entirely different thing.
John:
And so I think if you guys ever got to the point where you had,
John:
75 150 windows open and you logged into a second account and then all of a sudden window dragging was weird you'd be like huh my computer must be overloaded maybe i should reboot and you'd forget about it but now you know better now you know that even if your computer was 100 idle and the only thing open was text edit with that number of windows open your window dragging is going to be super laggy and slow oh the other fun thing by the way is the uh the jumpiness uh
John:
That is, in fact, the window snapping thing.
John:
You know, when you drag a window in macOS and it tries to line itself up with its neighboring window, they added that in Sierra something, or maybe High Sierra.
John:
You can disable that by holding down the option key, and when you hold down the option key and drag windows around, the jumpiness disappears.
John:
What you're left with is the massive lag, and basically the massive lag, the jumpiness comes from the fact that there's massive lag, and the jumpy, you know, like the snapping,
John:
is lagging is is ahead of where the window actually is and it flips out and starts going all the place anyway if you hold on option you will just get the molasses like lag and not get the jumpiness so that that totally shows that this is a well where is the problem is the problem in the window manager or is the problem in the you know human interface device driver thing probably somewhere in the driver thing because the window server is probably doing the right thing it's just probably getting uh bogus input from the mouse but
John:
Further news as we continue to track this down, but the last revelation was it's when more than one user's logged in.
John:
And the new revelation is actually that just lets you see it more easily.
John:
And actually every single Mac and every single pointing device in the entire world is susceptible to this.
John:
It's just a question of what it takes to make it reproduce.
Casey:
I mean, really, John, this is the reaping or whatever of your life choices.
Casey:
You're using an Intel Mac that you spent too much money on.
Casey:
You're using a wired mouse like it's 1996.
Casey:
I mean, hell, you're using a mouse like it's 2003, much less a wired mouse like it's 1996.
John:
I'm never not going to use a mouse.
John:
Never.
Casey:
See, I said that.
Casey:
I was that guy until five or ten years ago, and I am all in on the trackpad.
Casey:
Trackpad's everywhere, man.
Casey:
Nope, nope.
John:
why anyway it happens with a trackpad sure that's what i'm saying like real you could you could say this is my punishment for opening too many windows but 25 25 is not too many go ahead hit the little uh mission control and count your windows i bet you all have more than 25 windows open right now uh not let's look like as in not hidden i think i have eight well yeah that's the thing they do need to be visible i suppose you can just do hide others and say i can do hide others and say look i have one window open it's the zoom window but no i have five i have eight
John:
All windows, not just the ones that are visible.
John:
Do show all.
John:
Yeah, I have eight.
John:
Show all?
John:
You have eight windows?
Casey:
Yeah, I have one Safari window with two tabs.
Casey:
I have one Chrome window with one, two, three, four, five, six, seven tabs.
Casey:
Visual Studio Code, which I use with show notes.
Casey:
Textual, which is the IRC app.
Casey:
Zoom, Audio Hijack, Slack, and Messages.
Casey:
That's it.
Casey:
That's everything.
Casey:
How many is that?
Casey:
Eight.
John:
That's only eight?
Casey:
Oh, actually, Males.
Casey:
I'm sorry.
Casey:
Males hidden.
Casey:
I'm sorry.
John:
I don't know why you guys buy fancy computers.
John:
You might as well just get an iPad.
John:
Wow.
Casey:
What are you doing?
Casey:
What are your 20... Okay, tough guy.
Casey:
Let's do it.
Casey:
Let me hear your 25 fucking windows.
John:
You don't want to do this.
Casey:
No, I want to hear your 25 fucking windows.
John:
Let's hear it.
John:
It's way more than 25.
John:
Oh, my gosh.
John:
Google Chrome.
John:
Let's see.
Casey:
Well, with 3,000 tabs, right?
John:
So that's your first problem.
John:
We're not counting tabs.
John:
We're just counting windows.
John:
One...
John:
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.
Casey:
Stop!
Casey:
You have 13 Chrome windows?
Casey:
What the hell is wrong with you?
Marco:
So, what's the context?
Marco:
Hold on.
Marco:
Okay, I know we did this before, but this is...
Marco:
13 different windows with tabs within each one like what are these different projects you're working on like what's how why why the split here uh why why do i use uh safari and no no no how do you end up with 13 windows 13 windows for the same browser each of which has tabs in it yeah yeah so there's my main chrome window which has a fixed set of tabs in it that never changes right so let's ignore that one um
John:
There is the window with a bunch of tabs that was when I was trying to debug call recorder problems.
John:
Call recorder, by the way, does not work in Sonoma.
John:
Call recorder for Skype.
John:
I sent a text or email about it.
John:
I'll close that one now.
John:
There is me looking up information about the release date of Ventura in a bunch of tabs when I was talking to some folks about this.
John:
Just trying to pin down when this happened.
John:
uh there is the page uh with a bunch of tabs related to bb edit language servers because i was debugging some issues with the php language server marco and bb i didn't write it i know i'm just saying why am i doing it why do i why do i have a php language server installed for bb edit right now
John:
There are a bunch of pages related to Perl Unicode because I was doing some research for a tweet I posted about Unicode stuff.
John:
I can close that one now.
John:
There is a page with a bunch of tabs related to Sendable because I was messing with strict concurrency in Xcode.
John:
Maybe we'll touch on that at some point in the future.
Marco:
That was part of my day today as well.
John:
There are windows... These windows are themed.
John:
All the tabs in this window are about sendable.
John:
How do you do sendable with key value observing?
John:
Because it's an older API.
John:
Don't.
John:
That's the answer.
John:
Don't.
John:
Unfortunately...
John:
A lot of my apps are based heavily on key value observing.
John:
There's literally no other way to do it.
John:
Anyway, there is a page open with the YouTube studio and the YouTube pages related to my video.
John:
Because every time I update the feedback, what I ever put in the feedback, I put it in the description of the YouTube video for this bug.
Casey:
Here's the thing, though.
Casey:
I kind of do want to make you go through all of this BS.
Casey:
But what I don't understand is...
Casey:
one there was a long time ago i would say roundabouts of may 1st 2015 that a wise man once said you should have empathy for the machine there's no empathy here you don't need all this open you don't need all of these open you know you know why there's empathy because i endowed my mac with 96 gigs of ram i know you can't have that much in your computers your tiny little computers but i can have that i have 64 gigs of ram it's not that different
John:
Well, I have 96 and there's plenty free.
John:
Oh, my God.
John:
Anyway, I could continue enumerating them.
John:
But yeah, I will clean these up as I go through and close these things.
John:
But the language server thing from Beep Edit, for example, I'm not actively pursuing that now, but occasionally it crashes and stuff.
John:
So I want to leave that open so that when it does crash, I can go consult.
John:
Anyway.
Marco:
By the way, real-time follow-up, the MacBook Pro is currently available with up to 96 gigs of memory.
John:
Oh, see ya.
John:
But not yours.
Marco:
Well.
Casey:
Oh, gosh.
Casey:
Move those goalposts, John.
Casey:
Keep moving them.
Casey:
Keep moving them.
John:
No, I said your computers.
John:
Yeah, he doesn't have the M2, right?
Marco:
No, I have the M1, but still.
John:
I know.
John:
It was never offered with 96.
Marco:
But the M2s are the ones currently available in the same family in our puny little laptop.
John:
Anyway, I have a similar number of windows open in Safari for the same reason.
John:
BBEdit.
John:
BBEdit.
John:
Oh, jeez.
John:
Too many.
John:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.
John:
Oh, my God.
John:
Windows?
John:
42 BBEdit Windows.
Marco:
42?
Casey:
42, baby.
Casey:
Wait, do those have tabs in them?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
you need an intervention you need an intervention now if you're working on a project uh you know like in like you know a directory uh for a web app or whatever in bb edit do you does one window hold like all the files you switch between them or i rarely use that interface i did when i was for example working on the uh the cms stuff the atp cms i did the one window project directory thing when you were programming php
John:
yeah but that's not what i prefer i prefer separate windows as you can see i prefer a separate one is this bb at windows at this point there's a set of bb at windows that i essentially always have open just always this is lunacy to me i mean i have that with text made too but there's like four or three of them at most times like it's not yeah i have a lot more stuff apparently stuff going on there's one there's one slack window there's one messages window there are two ivory windows
Marco:
The amount of like balls I have in the air right now are at an all time high in my life.
Marco:
Like I've never been busier and doing dealing with more projects and obligations and tasks that I'm doing right now.
Marco:
And I think I have if I if I include all the hidden windows, maybe I might have 15 windows open on my entire computer.
John:
Yeah, no, I've got more.
John:
I mean, there's one feedback assistant window.
John:
There's one Zoom window, one textual window, one system settings window.
John:
How many terminal windows?
John:
About 10-ish terminal windows.
Casey:
John, you are aware that one can close one of these windows and then reopen them.
John:
I do.
John:
I clean stuff up.
John:
In fact, while going through this thing, I closed a bunch of stuff that I was done with.
John:
I do occasionally go through and close things.
John:
Once a year?
Casey:
The reason you need a $17,000 Mac Pro is because you are incapable of cleaning up your own mess.
John:
That's not why.
John:
It's fine.
John:
And by the way, you're saying, oh, but how do you do that?
John:
Isn't that more than 25 windows?
John:
Isn't everything broken?
John:
Aha, but I only have one account logged in.
John:
Oh, my God.
John:
So everything's fine.
John:
It would take way more windows than this to bog it down.
Casey:
I don't even know.
Casey:
I know we went over this.
Casey:
What was that?
Casey:
Episode 96, I believe.
Casey:
I remember.
John:
I got a lot of Windows.
John:
I use it all.
John:
I use all the screen space.
John:
And I know you know this, but you can't actually hide them.
John:
You don't need to see them all at the same time.
Casey:
But I don't understand why you can't.
John:
I did write two separate programs for dealing with Windows and pulling them forward and hiding them and making them go away.
John:
There's a reason both of my applications have to do with Windows.
John:
And the third one I was talking about writing but can't, it would also have to do with window management.
Marco:
I love like, you know, so part of part of the challenge of writing a podcast app as a kind of I would say I would call myself kind of a moderately heavy podcast listener is that there are people who use my app that have collections that are like 10 times the size of mine.
Marco:
And so it's hard for me to actually know what the app is going to be like for them.
Marco:
And it's hard to to architect the app in such a way that it performs well for them because I'm not seeing that every day.
Marco:
John has no such problems with his apps because no one is using John's apps with more windows than John.
John:
But the thing is, what I do get for reports for my thing is people are using apps that I've literally never even heard of that do ridiculous things.
John:
Like...
John:
I don't even know what these apps do.
John:
I've downloaded so many apps because someone will say, hey, I was using this 3D app you've never heard of.
John:
Which one did I download recently?
John:
Maybe it was Rhino 3D.
John:
I think I've actually heard of that one.
John:
Maybe it was something different.
John:
That's been around forever.
John:
Yeah, but they'll send me these apps.
John:
There was one that started with an A. There was like some kind of audio editor that was not Audacity.
John:
And they'll send me them and say, just download the demo and do it.
John:
And I do it.
John:
But like...
Marco:
do you leave it open forever after that?
Marco:
Like, oh, I just, I don't know.
Marco:
I can't figure out how to quit.
John:
No, I mean, I delete that stuff.
John:
I always look at the C, is this going to put crap on my system?
John:
Anyway, sometimes I boot into another disk to do it because I don't know what they're going to install.
John:
But anyway, you do get, you still do get reports of like, hey, this app does some weird thing that interacts with it.
John:
And that's, those are good reports.
John:
But yeah, in terms of opening Windows,
John:
a pretty good to go there there's the brent simmons stories they told years ago that i used to use net newswire and you'll be shocked to learn that i had a million subscriptions in that newswire and he would uh i would complain to him about like hey i'm using the app and this thing is kind of slow he's like what do you mean it's slow it's lightning fast i'm like well eventually we get to how many subscriptions do you have so i think he wrote a blog post about that once like yeah there's a computer it's i don't like if you don't put a limit on the amount of things you can have i will use the computer to do what computers are good at which is remember a bunch of stuff for me so i don't have to
Casey:
John, at what point do you have an are we the baddies moment?
Casey:
At what point do you, rather than bending everything to your lunatic setup?
John:
25 windows is not a lunatic setup.
John:
I will stand by that.
John:
I know I have a lot of windows, but 25 is not a lot.
John:
It is just not.
Casey:
Okay, I'll let that go.
John:
I mean, again, look at the video.
John:
It's not like, oh, it gets a little bit slower at 25 windows.
John:
It is unusable at 25 windows.
John:
Just Matt, like, as in, look in the video.
John:
At one point, I tried to, like, reset to, like, oh, let me just drag this window back to where it was.
John:
I physically can't put the window back where it was because it is so messed up.
John:
Yeah.
John:
watch you've seen this video like the recording where i said let me just put i'm trying to put the sticky note back where it was i literally can't do it that's not like oh you're just annoyed because it's a little bit laggy when you have a million windows no it is unusable with 25 with two users logged in but again two users logged in is not unheard of and i use that frequently so i think my report is legitimate and i think apple should fix this but i fear because i am using an holder computer and because it's intel and because blah blah like they'll say well
John:
It's so much harder to reproduce on the M1s that we'll just sweep this under the carpet and say this is not a big deal and no one will ever have 200 windows open.
Casey:
I agree with you that this is a legit problem and it legitimately should be fixed as much as I'm snarking and giving you a hard time.
John:
And by the way, like forget about like the problem.
John:
This is a sign that something is wrong in the code.
John:
Like it's not like the computer quote unquote can't handle it because it's just too much.
John:
It should be able to handle it.
John:
This should be nothing.
John:
And it was like in, you know, in Mac OS 10.2 Jaguar.
John:
You could have 25 windows open until users logged in, and it would go fine.
John:
Like, I'm not asking it to do – it just seems, oh, you have a lot of windows.
John:
That's kind of like the naive person's understanding of computers.
John:
Oh, I think my computer is overloaded because I have too many windows open.
John:
No, that is not a thing.
John:
Like, things that – you can have one window open with an infinite loop in JavaScript on some Facebook page.
John:
Yeah, that can probably, you know, make your – things, but like –
John:
The number of windows open seems like a lot to us because it is like visually oppressive.
John:
But as far as the computer is concerned, 25 empty text edit windows is not stressing it at all.
John:
Just it's not.
John:
That's the thing where it's like you have yourself to blame because you're overloading the computer.
John:
This is not overloading the computer at all.
Casey:
I agree with you that this should be fixed.
Casey:
I agree with you.
Casey:
It's indicative of a deeper problem.
Casey:
But golly, at some point, I wonder if maybe it's time to rethink your strategy here a little bit there, big guy.
Casey:
So my strategy should be, I'm going to make sure I use less than 25 windows so I can drag them without... No, all kidding aside, I think the strategy is... And this is going to sound snarky, and I'm trying to take off the snark hat.
Casey:
It was fully on my head earlier, but I'm trying to take it off now.
Casey:
Log out of the other user.
Casey:
If you're done using...
John:
But that's so annoying to do because I go back and forth.
John:
It's so annoying to do.
Casey:
How often do you go back and forth?
John:
Well, let me tell you why.
John:
This is related to another book report.
John:
Why do I have to leave my wife's account logged in?
John:
Because if I don't, it will never do face analysis because she has to be logged in for the conditions to be just right for the stupid face analysis thing to run.
John:
It's like, oh, you know, just don't use the photos app, but make sure you've run it at least once to launch the photo demons.
John:
But the user has to be logged in.
John:
I'm pretty sure if she's not logged in, photo analysis will not, photo analysis will not run against
John:
Her library.
Marco:
Why doesn't her library live on her Mac Studio?
John:
It does.
John:
It does live on her Mac Studio.
Marco:
So is there a reason she has to be logged into your Mac Pro all the time?
John:
When I... Well, she's not logged in all the time, but when I'm working on photo stuff on...
John:
my computer and she hasn't launched photos like recently or and also i'm not sure how much how long it takes for that stuff to sync like i'm doing work in the photo library on my computer on her account oh so i don't have to be hogging her computer that's the whole point of it you know what i mean and i could go over to her computer and say let me launch photos and let me launch activity monitor let me make sure because if she's using her computer photo analysis d is gonna be like oh i can't run now because she's using the computer and i'm only supposed to run the background priority you know
John:
It does help that it is on her computer.
John:
And I have, when she's at work, gone and tried to make it run on her computer.
John:
But that's one of the reasons why I'm constantly leaving her logged in.
John:
And you know I don't want to leave her logged in because it makes my windowing experience terrible.
John:
But sometimes I have to leave her logged in.
John:
And anyway, I hop back and forth.
John:
Like, let me do something over here.
John:
Let me do something over there.
John:
I wish I could hop back and forth faster.
John:
I kind of wish fast user switching was even faster.
John:
Remember when I used to do the cube rotation effect?
John:
I was annoyed that that slowed me down.
John:
But anyway, the point is these are features of the operating system.
John:
I'm using the computer.
John:
It's supposed to be able to do these things.
John:
I'm not going to like shrink myself down to work around a bizarre bug in the IO subsystem of the recent versions only of the Mac operating system.
Marco:
I guess I'd be a little less patient if this hit me.
Marco:
Like, you know, whenever I run into a problem with something that Apple's doing that I can modify some habit or way I'm using something to just completely set up the problem, I'll usually just choose to do that.
Marco:
Like, yeah, I'll complain about it on the podcast.
John:
I mean, there's only one user logged in now.
John:
Like, I don't leave.
John:
As soon as this bug hit in 13.3, I stopped my old habit of just constantly leaving her logged in.
John:
For example, on my wife's computer, like, every user is logged in all the time because why wouldn't it?
John:
Because it's just, you know, it's convenient because it's kind of a shared computer and, you know,
John:
But yeah, I used to leave multi-users log in now.
John:
But since this bug happened, what I've changed is I am the only logged in user unless I actually need to be doing something on her account.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I feel like this is the same as all of us.
Casey:
When we were all giving Mike garbage because he was having some sort of issue with his phone and everyone just kept telling him to, you know, what was it?
Casey:
Dump everything and like start anew.
Casey:
I forget the term that we were using for it.
John:
Restore the phone.
John:
Oh, I'd be totally willing to do that if it would fix the problem.
John:
But as we know now, it would not.
Casey:
Well, but I feel like what's happening is we're all saying to you, change the way you're using the phone.
Casey:
Or excuse me, using the computer.
Casey:
And the same way we were saying to him, just try to restore.
Casey:
Well, John, just try to change the way that you use the... I will not!
John:
I will not!
John:
But change it in one way.
John:
Less than 25 Windows is a non-starter.
John:
Like, just non-starter.
John:
It's never going to happen.
John:
Never.
John:
Like, why would I do that?
John:
I could have more than 25 Windows open on my Mac+.
John:
in the finder i mean come on 25 windows you don't need you don't need all of these open concurrently you may want them but you don't need them to be open concurrently but that's but that's what the computer is doing for me i don't i don't know it isn't apparently i don't i don't need to have more than one application open at once i lived a long time uh especially in terms of my former years where only one application could be open at a time you just quit one and launch the other one and it's fine but come on that's what computers are for
Marco:
Why not also just, like, try a different mouse that has a higher limit, you know?
Marco:
Like, there are so many options that you can easily sidestep this.
John:
Yeah, I mean, the limit, unfortunately, on my computer, going to... I tried all the mice I have access to.
John:
The limit doesn't go up high enough.
John:
I can get it up to, like...
John:
50 or 75 but like it's not it's not far enough up they're like oh i won't see this anymore i'll still see it because it's it is kind of a slope it's not like it doesn't happen and all of a sudden it happens there's a gradient right so with 25 you see it less with bluetooth with 50 you start to see a little bit more with 75 it's back in full force it's it's not great and also like bluetooth maybe it's because my mac is farther away i don't know like i always feel like bluetooth is not as reliable and smooth as usb at least under this stupid mouse
John:
And the other mice, as we've established, I don't like the shape of them.
John:
Right.
John:
So I like, you know, it's it's hard.
John:
Like I was off.
John:
I was actually installed.
John:
I was like, OK, I'm going to go Bluetooth now because Bluetooth solves the problem before I had figured out that Bluetooth didn't solve the problem.
John:
And I was all ready to go all Bluetooth because, you know, I'll deal with the lag if this just solves it or, you know, start shopping for a new mouse.
John:
But once I determined that this didn't solve the problem, like, no, this is not Apple to fix.
Marco:
I fully agree with you.
Marco:
This is a real problem and they should fix it.
Marco:
However, it's a difference of philosophy of like, what do I do as the person suffering from this problem?
Marco:
Like I can bang my head against it forever or I can just sidestep it.
John:
I'm not suffering from it now because only one user is logged in.
John:
Like that's the common case now is only one user is logged in.
John:
And so I don't suffer from it.
Casey:
Oh my.
John:
Because with one user logged in, like, it's not linear.
John:
It's not, like I said, with one user logged in, it doesn't take twice as many windows.
John:
It takes, like, five, ten times as many.
John:
Like, right now, one user logged in, and I have, what, 100 windows open?
John:
And it's fine.
John:
So this is how I spend most of my time using the computer.
John:
It's just that every time I have to go to my wife's account, I basically have to...
John:
Like, oh, now I'm intentionally causing this thing to happen, and I'll be like this for the rest of the day.
John:
So remember, if you're going to move Windows around, hide Windows first.
John:
That's the real modification that you guys haven't touched on that I have to do.
John:
Because remember, it's just the visibility of the Windows, not the fact that they're open.
John:
So Command Option H is your friend, because that essentially solves the problem.
John:
If you just constantly hide others or Option click away from one app to another, it's how many Windows are visible on the screen.
John:
Because if they're not visible on the screen, the Windows server doesn't try to snap to them and doesn't do all that, like...
John:
Actually, I don't know why the visibility of the windows affects the mouse tracking part, but it does.
John:
Experimentally, visibility of the windows is the determining factor.
John:
So that is the modification of behavior that I probably should be doing more often.
John:
Hiding other windows, not closing them.
John:
Oh, my word.
Casey:
At what point are you going to just dedicate a day or two to doing a manual Git bisect and trying to figure out exactly when this was introduced?
Casey:
I don't have the source code to the operating system.
Casey:
No, no, no, not a literal one.
Casey:
I'm saying like, I'm both kidding and actually not kidding.
Casey:
You said that it was around, what, 13.3 or something like that?
Casey:
I forget what version it was.
John:
Yeah, yeah.
Casey:
you could go to version 13 to install it.
Casey:
See if it happens.
Casey:
Version 13 2.1.
Casey:
I don't know if that's even a thing, but you know, and you could try doing what is, it's hard to get those installers.
John:
I could do that.
John:
But like, honestly, that's like, I don't care.
John:
Like, I don't think that's going to help that much.
John:
And if Apple cares, they can figure that out.
John:
Like it's their, it's their thing.
Casey:
like well yes but here again like jokes have left the room you've put in an inordinate amount of work trying to figure out and narrow down what this is and i commend as much as i'm giving you a hard time i commend you for it because i wouldn't have that freaking patience no neither would i was saying that he would exactly i mean i let i let it live for like six months figuring out you know either it's not a big deal or it'll be fixed in sonoma because it seems like it's fixed in sonoma but now that i know it's not it came roaring back i'm like no this needs to be addressed
Casey:
Again, I genuinely admire your tenacity as much as I'm giving you a whole pile of poop.
Casey:
I genuinely admire your tenacity.
Casey:
But at this point, like I feel like if Apple isn't doing anything about it now and there's maybe a bunch of innocent reasons and a bunch of not so innocent.
John:
We don't know if they're they might be doing stuff about it.
John:
I just don't know.
Casey:
Wouldn't it be nice if there was some feedback?
John:
It's only been six months, Casey.
Casey:
A mere six months.
Casey:
It hasn't even been a decade.
Casey:
But I almost wonder if you went and did this quote-unquote get bisect and said it's in 13.2.79 or whatever, that I wonder if that would get them to be
Casey:
I was going to say less lazy, but that's not fair.
Casey:
I wonder if that would just get them.
John:
I mean, they'd have to like diff the operating system, diff Sonoma against 13.1.
John:
Like they don't because they don't even know what the problem is.
John:
Like I'm not going to tell them how to debug this because the operating system is huge.
John:
There's millions of lines of code.
John:
Like, you know how many diffs there must be between 13 point something and 14?
Casey:
That's exactly my point.
Casey:
If you said it wasn't in 13.3, but it is in 13.4.
Casey:
Again, I'm getting these numbers wrong.
Casey:
That narrows the problem space.
John:
yeah yeah i mean it could have been the type of thing that get crept up over time that would be a very unfortunate result of me doing that experiment which is like well it's harder to trigger in 13.1 harder still in 13.0 because again it's not like a thing where it's on and off it's just like a gradient of uh badness depending on how much stuff you're doing but yeah oh my word
John:
It's annoying.
John:
I mean, I don't envy them trying to track down this bug.
John:
I'm just trying to help here.
John:
Like I said, the main thing I fear is like, I mean, it's a fear, but it's also the type of thing of like, well, if it's really hard to reproduce on faster Macs, eventually when I get an M3 Mac or something or an M4 Mac.
John:
It'll take 700 windows to reproduce and I'll never see it again because I never have that many.
Casey:
Oh, you will.
Casey:
You will.
John:
I've never been that high.
Marco:
You'll hit that limit.
Marco:
If there is a limit, you'll find it.
Marco:
I don't think so.
John:
I need a much bigger screen.
John:
There is a crowding.
John:
Remember, it's visible windows.
John:
They have to be visible.
John:
There's a limit to how many can be visible.
Casey:
You know, another thing, again, jokes have left the room.
Casey:
Another thing that I wonder if it would be worth you trying, and I know you're going to vomit all over your desk when I bring this up, but what if you tried Spaces?
Casey:
I wonder if using Spaces and putting, I don't know, all the Chrome windows in one space, which I will be the first to tell you, that would dramatically change the way you use your computer.
Casey:
And I'm not arguing that, but I wonder if that would be...
John:
at least an interesting way now hide out hide others is way faster than spaces and essentially accomplishes the same purpose you know what i mean or even stage manager like anything like it's just visibility like i don't need to put them way over another space i just need to option click away from one app to another you know and hide them behind me it's hiding is not bad and and i do hide most of the time it's just that in certain scenarios i have several clusters of things going on and it's enough for it to be annoying
John:
no i hear that no i mean i think you'll be less sympathetic if and when you start encountering this because considering this has gotten worse over time it either didn't exist and then did exist or it has gotten worse because i didn't notice this at all and i would have because it's not like i've changed i didn't notice this at all i you know a year or two ago and now i notice it a lot so it may be coming for you guys eventually because if it continues to get worse
John:
uh if you ever log in a second user even with your eight windows open you might see it and not as severely but you might see it a little bit you're like huh is this app slow why is it lagging behind the cursor a little bit like in theory eight windows is you should be able to see some amount of lag if you were to like micro analyze it in slow-mo video right because it is not again it's not like not happening then happening it's just a matter of degree how much is it happening with eight windows it's happening more than it is with seven which is more than it is with six which is more than it is with five
John:
You know, it's happening to you, too.
John:
You just don't know it.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I think, like, Casey and I use so many fewer windows.
Marco:
Also, we're using, you know, Apple Silicon Max, and I use an Apple mouse.
John:
Yeah, the Apple mouse is not... I don't think it's the Apple mouse.
John:
I think it's the polling rate of the mouse.
John:
That's why I think Bluetooth is harder than USB, because I think USB allows...
John:
lower latency and more polling especially if like the fancy mice like this microsoft one it's not that fancy but like logitech logitech mx master 3 i think is a semi well maybe it's not that high well it's it's more that like the you know the the combination of conditions that i'm using like i'm using their recent hardware i'm using their mouse
Marco:
I think it's much less likely that a bug that affects me in that way would ever get through Apple because they would hit it.
Marco:
I'm using the hardware in combinations and software in patterns that they expect.
Marco:
I'm like, I'm on the happy path.
Marco:
I'm using the mainstream stuff.
Marco:
You have some kind of fringe edge case things.
Marco:
You have this weird Microsoft mouse.
Marco:
You're using the Mac Pro.
Marco:
You have multiple users.
John:
The Microsoft mouse is not weird.
John:
It's just a USB connected mouse.
Marco:
Well, to Apple, it's weird.
John:
you know like because again i you know pick a logitech plain old logitech usb connected mouse not weird uh easy to reproduce it's not just a microsoft mouse like i think i think it really has to do with the well might have to do with the polling rate i don't have a way of telling what the polling rate is but yeah but some people said they reproduced it with the built-in trackpad on their macbook pro so that's pretty happy path too you know what i mean yeah fair anyway i i do i do think you two should both reproduce this next week i'll have you log into a second account before we start recording just so you can see it for yourself just so you know you will know that your computers are not immune
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Casey:
Breaking news as we record tonight on Wednesday night.
Casey:
Apple just today has released 17.0.3.
Casey:
This update provides important bug fixes, security updates, and addresses an issue that may cause iPhone, I still don't like that they don't use the, may cause iPhone to run warmer than expected.
Casey:
What is going on here?
Casey:
Apparently, all of our iPhone 15s are melting.
Casey:
And I think, Marco, you broke this news, what, a week or two ago when you said during your transfer, your iPhone attempted to melt into the desk.
Marco:
Yeah, it was thermally throttling itself and telling me that.
Marco:
This whole thing, the heat gate, as Gruber and Malt said on the talk show, it's gate season.
Marco:
All the scandals about the iPhone.
Marco:
I got my fine woven case with the hole that's too small and the material that's cracked is easily.
Marco:
Here I got my iPhone 15 Pro with its overheating chip in the heavy use of the first day.
Marco:
If the iPhone 15 Pro really does run a little hotter...
Marco:
Apple will never say that.
Marco:
Like, if this is a real problem, it absolutely will never be said.
John:
You mean if it's a hardware problem?
Marco:
Yeah, if it's like a real shortcoming that's just inherent to the design and choices made for the iPhone 15 Pro, Apple will never in a million years say that.
Casey:
Well, I don't understand.
Casey:
I don't think that's fair at all, because it's not like they've ever told us that we were holding a phone wrong.
Casey:
What are they going to tell us now, that we're touching it wrong?
John:
AntennaGate, they did confirm that this thing you said could happen if you did a thing.
John:
Yeah, if you do that thing, the thing you said does happen.
John:
So they did confirm that.
John:
And here's the other thing about the iPhone 15.
John:
I haven't seen the teardowns from iFixit yet, but I don't think there's anything about the way it is constructed and cooled that is...
John:
different than the 14 pro in a way that would be this profound there was we talked about last time like well the titanium has less mass that means there's less mass to soak up the uh the temperature although i don't actually know the heat i don't actually i don't think that's how that works but it might be a factor but i don't think that's a major master but it's also the there's also a fact that i don't know if titanium is better or worse at conducting heat than aluminum right and what you know alloy of titanium or you know anyway
John:
There are a lot of factors involved.
Marco:
Even how much of the heat from the chip, which is kind of in the middle back of the phone, how much of that heat even makes it to the outer frame?
Marco:
Probably not a lot.
John:
But anyway, what I'm saying is that this phone is not radically different construction-wise.
John:
So what would have to be true for it to be a hardware issue is that something in it, presumably the SoC, would itself have to be radically different.
John:
Oh, this SoC gets way hotter.
Yeah.
John:
uh or he's capable of getting way hotter or whatever and i so far i haven't seen any evidence of that that the soc because it is three nanometers even if it is no better than five nanometer it should get a little hotter because it's you know has more transistors but
John:
you know is the density up that much like it doesn't it seems like the overheating is so you know obvious and severe that you would need if it was a hardware related thing it would have to be incredibly significant like totally different cooling system totally different design for the phone or this soc is just way way hotter than the other one and none of those things seem to be true so i'm willing to take apple's explanation at face value which is uh this is a software problem
Marco:
Probably.
Marco:
Or at least software is a lot of things.
Marco:
Software could be the thermal regulation of the chip.
Marco:
When does the chip throttle?
Marco:
Under what conditions?
Marco:
How far is it willing to push itself before it starts throttling?
Marco:
Because phone chips, if you run them hard, they do throttle.
Marco:
That's not a new thing.
Marco:
That's not a thing inherent to the iPhone 15 device.
Marco:
These ships have no active cooling.
Marco:
There's a certain limit to how far they can or how long they can run at full blast.
Marco:
And they will throttle themselves if need be.
Marco:
And that's again, that's not new.
Marco:
That's not a scandal.
Marco:
That's that's not news.
Marco:
It could just be that like they ship the iPhone 15 Pro with bad tradeoffs or, you know, like bad, a bad thermal regulation, you know, set of parameters.
Marco:
And they've tweaked that.
John:
I mean, so if you keep reading the Apple statement, they did spread a lot of the software blame around.
John:
This is quoting directly from Apple.
John:
Blah, blah, blah.
John:
Apple says, we have also found a bug in iOS 17 that is impacting some users and will be addressing a software update.
John:
So that's them saying...
John:
We've got a bug are up some part of iOS 17.
John:
It could be the part that you just talked about, Marco, that the part that controls how the thing thermal throttles or whatever.
John:
But that's them.
John:
The Apple saying something wrong in iOS 17.
John:
We'll fix that.
John:
And they say another issue involves some recent updates to third party apps that are causing them to overload the system.
John:
We were working with the app developers, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John:
So they're blaming some third-party apps and they're blaming the operating system.
John:
So there's enough software.
John:
And I think the third-party app ones is also kind of an operating system thing because the operating system on iPhones at least is supposed to keep them kind of in check and not let them burn up the whole CPU or whatever.
John:
But there's enough vague software blame to go around to say,
John:
hey, there's nothing inherently wrong with the design of this phone.
John:
It's just that when you do a lot of stuff using, if you use a lot of CPU, it gets hot and things are using more CPU than they quote unquote should be on a phone.
John:
And so that's why it's hot.
Marco:
yeah i mean that's i i think this is probably i think all of those things are true i think these apps are using too much cpu you know the way ios throttles app cpus it isn't it doesn't throttle you to like all right you're currently using 100 of a core we're gonna let you use 80 of a core forever no that isn't how it works the way it works at least last time i checked maybe they've changed but the way the way it has usually worked is like
Marco:
foreground apps can do whatever they want to the CPU as long as they want.
Marco:
The CPU might eventually thermally throttle itself down to a lower clock speed or something, but foreground apps do not have any CPU restrictions.
Marco:
The iOS restrictions are mainly just about background apps not burning too much power.
Marco:
And on that, they do have a lot of software controls.
Marco:
Once you've reached a certain threshold, the system just kills your app.
Marco:
So it'll be something like you've used over 100% CPU for over 90 seconds.
Marco:
Then they just kill you.
Marco:
So it's not keeping apps from heating up the CPU at all.
Marco:
It's keeping background apps from burning up too much CPU in the background.
Marco:
But foreground apps can heat up the CPU as much as they want as long as you're still using them.
Marco:
And so my guess is, yes, those apps were ridiculous.
Marco:
They always are.
Marco:
Like Instagram, if you are an Instagram user, you know that is one of the heaviest battery draining apps on your phone if you ever look at the battery screen.
Marco:
It's like Instagram is like one of the number one things up there.
Casey:
Did we talk about this?
Casey:
Did I admit publicly that—I thought I did talk about this.
Casey:
I still maintain that there is no need to force quit anything, but I have now turned into I will force quit Instagram and Facebook, and only those two.
John:
Wait, wait.
John:
You still maintain that there's no need to force quit anything?
John:
Do you want to amend that statement?
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
In general usage, of course there are times that you will need to force quit things.
Casey:
I'm saying you don't need to do the swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe,
John:
I think what you were meant to say was there is no need to ritualistically force quit every single application every time you're done using the phone for a moment.
Casey:
Sorry.
Casey:
Yes, that is what I meant.
Casey:
And the only way that I break that rule, which I do agree that that is the case, I have gotten to the point, I think because I've been so scared by what I see in that battery screen that Marco just brought up, I will now force quit Instagram and Facebook if I ever look at them because it just...
Casey:
It just creeps me out how much battery they use.
Casey:
I bet you 100% of it is probably when I'm foregrounded or when they're foregrounded.
Casey:
But still, it just creeps me out how much they destroy my battery.
John:
It used to be the case that if you got forced quit, you couldn't run in the background anymore until you were launched.
John:
But they changed that many years ago, didn't they?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Well, there's a few exceptions to that.
Casey:
Oh, I guess like a silent notification.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
So notification update, background refresh that used to be killed in the back.
Marco:
If you did that now, it's not because the problem is like people would force quit everything, you know, out of habit.
Marco:
And then they would complain, why isn't this app getting notifications or whatever?
John:
Why is my stuff not updating?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And so they've had to add little exceptions here and there.
John:
So what that means is that your decision to force quit what you perceive to be a misbehaving application, that app still has the ability to misbehave because you're not preventing it from doing background refresh, for example.
John:
And if it's doing background refresh aggressively or getting silent notification updates from Facebook or whatever, which I'm sure it totally is, it's still back there being badly behaved.
John:
Yeah.
John:
yeah and and if and if the app is in the foreground it can do almost whatever it wants like although when it when it's doing that like the operating system you know won't kill it but uh it will the cpu will throttle due to heat yes so when you're playing a game your frame rates will drop not because the operating system is saying you can't have this many frames but because literally the these clock speed of the cpu is being turned down and so everything is going to get slower and you know it's thermal throttling right
Marco:
Yeah, and so that's why I'm guessing the most likely explanation for the iPhone hot story here, most likely explanation is those parameters for when it would throttle and under what conditions were not set right or were not ideal for real world use.
John:
that that's not my that's not my guess my guess is this and as my guess is based on my wife's story of her 15 pro her 15 pro was she said i wish i could read her quote but i don't have it handy here um i think what you're saying it was getting it was like felt like it was too hot to touch uh like she like it was uncomfortable to have in her hand and she's got the fine woven case on it so it's not like she's holding the bare phone she has a sweater on it yeah well you know exactly
John:
here's what it says i can't talk on the phone without it almost burning my hand from the heat what was she doing with her phone talking on the phone like voice call like cell network voice call not facetime not facetime audio but like telephone call so the screen's not even on she's just talking on the telephone with her iphone which is madness i know but some people do it and it was getting so hot some people also use wired mice it was almost burning her hand
John:
What that makes me think is that it is not a temperature curve thing or whatever.
John:
Here's what I think it is.
John:
These operating systems, you know, they're based on Darwin, which is underlying all of Apple stuff.
John:
It's Unix.
John:
It's got a whole bunch of different processes running.
John:
Some subsystem of the operating system that has split off into a daemon process or whatever, like which is most of the parts of the operating system, had some kind of bug in it.
John:
where it would get caught in an infinite loop and it's some essential part of the system that it doesn't get killed and if it does get killed it immediately relaunches and it just would crash and relaunch and get caught in an infinite loop and maybe be killed by a watchdog process and relaunching it caught in an infinite loop because some inner part of the operating system flipping out and getting caught in an infinite loop that's not going to get killed by the operating system because it's part of the operating system and talking on the phone what could possibly be burning up your your thing in your hand when you're talking on the phone it's got to be
John:
It's got to be some subsystem that like comes into being when you're talking on the phone or like when like this reads to me like something crashing and looping because I can't think of anything else that would explain.
John:
And that would be Apple saying, oh, some some thing is crashing all the time.
John:
So the third party apps thing.
John:
I have a harder time wondering what that could be because, you know, like Casey said, Instagram has always been like this.
John:
Like this is not new, right?
John:
Apple has been iOS versus Facebook apps or iOS versus badly behaved apps.
John:
That war has been going on for ages.
John:
It's not like, oh, we never thought we'd have to handle this.
John:
I don't think anything changed recently that would, you know.
John:
Anyway, we should skip to the end here, which is Apple does have a supposed fix for this that came out hours before we started recording, which is iOS 17.0.3.
John:
The text from Apple on this is, this update provides important bug fixes, security updates, and addresses an issue that may cause iPhone to run warmer than expected.
John:
Does it work?
John:
I don't have it installed yet.
John:
Either you install it?
Marco:
I have the developer beta that has allegedly the same fix in it.
John:
Yeah, I don't have an iPhone 15 Pro, but my wife is definitely updating her phone.
John:
And so I'll let you know how it goes for her.
John:
But yeah, talking on the phone, making it so hot that it was burning her hand.
John:
That's not good.
John:
I mean, and if this continues, if 1710.3 doesn't fix it, I feel like that's when I start thinking of like manufacturing defect.
John:
Like, you know, thermal.
John:
Is there even any thermal paste?
John:
I don't even want to know.
John:
Like anyway, not a great start, but we'll see.
Casey:
Yeah, I feel like this is the beginnings of the studio display camera problems when Apple was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Casey:
It's software.
Casey:
We're fine.
Casey:
It's software.
Casey:
And to be clear, like, I have no reason to believe that it isn't software.
Casey:
I'm not trying to imply that Apple's full of it.
Casey:
But as we quickly learned with the studio display, they were full of it at that point.
Casey:
Like, it seems like the camera and the studio display is legitimately full.
Casey:
Not great, but I suspect that this is for real a software issue.
Casey:
Although I will say that some friends of ours asked in a group chat with Aaron and me, asked, hey, how do you like your new phones?
Casey:
Ours arrive in a couple of weeks.
Casey:
And I said, you know, by and large, it's fine.
Casey:
The case story is real bad this year, but the phones are good.
Casey:
And Aaron said, well, you know, the phone is fine, but the battery life is no better than my 1480s.
Casey:
And I plugged it in to top it off just now.
Casey:
And it's basically on fire.
Casey:
Now, I'm pretty sure she was plugged into a MacBook Pro charger.
Casey:
And so presumably it was fast charging.
Casey:
But nonetheless, it certainly seemed that even charging her phone was making it quite toasty.
Casey:
So I'm curious because she hasn't applied the update yet.
Casey:
I'm curious if that gets any better once she's updated.
John:
Yeah, we need some YouTuber with access to like, you know, like one of those heat measuring things.
John:
Like we need quantitative measurements because as I said last week, when the thing that has something hot inside it is hot to a touch, that means the heat is going from the inside to the outside and radiating out.
John:
So like if you hold it and don't feel any heat, but it's still producing the same amount that he is trapped inside.
John:
So things that quote unquote feel hotter may actually be running cooler because the thing that you want to be cool is in the middle of the phone.
John:
and you want the heat to go out, and then it hits your hand.
John:
And that's not great.
John:
You don't want it.
John:
That's one of the reasons that people have reported that they think Apple doesn't put better, quote-unquote, better cooling systems in their laptops is because it can't get too hot on your lap, so they can't immediately dump all the heat out the back of the laptop because it will burn your legs, so they have to let it dissipate out slowly so it never gets too hot.
John:
So I don't know the answer to the question of, is it producing more heat inside the phone, or is it merely...
John:
better at shedding the heat that it does produce and it's shedding it like too quickly essentially like that its cooling system is quote unquote too good because as soon as the soc heats up it's so thermally conducted that it blasts that heat from the soc out of the phone and hits you and it is uncomfortable and to be clear that's not you don't want that that's not good but i don't actually know if the quantity of heat is larger or if it's just that the transfer is faster and i think you'd need fancy scientific equipment to figure that out
Marco:
I'll see you next time.
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Casey:
Recently, I think this was a couple of weeks back, there was an interesting rumor about Apple making a quote-unquote low-cost MacBook.
Casey:
And I feel like we've heard about this on and off throughout the years.
Casey:
I was just becoming an Apple fan when the Ultrabook, I'm pretty sure that's what we called them, was a thing.
Casey:
That was a physically small, extraordinarily underpowered computer.
John:
No, those were Netbooks.
John:
You're talking about Netbooks?
John:
I'm sorry, you're right, I'm sorry.
John:
Ultrabook was the MacBook Air clones for IPC event.
Casey:
No, I'm sorry.
Casey:
You are 100% correct.
Casey:
My apologies.
Casey:
Thank you for correcting me.
Casey:
So netbooks were a thing.
Casey:
They were very clever and interesting, but also pieces of crap.
Casey:
But we heard a bunch of rumors that Apple was going to make a netbook, and I think the closest we got to that was an iPad.
Casey:
And here we are.
Casey:
We're circling this thing once again.
Casey:
And so reading from Jason at Six Colors...
Casey:
Apple is reportedly developing a low-cost MacBook series to compete with Chromebook models in the education sector that could be released as early as the second half of 2024.
Casey:
Sources said that Apple will likely launch a new product line for its low-cost MacBooks to differentiate it from existing MacBook Air and Pro lines.
Casey:
The outer appearance will still use metal casing, but made of different materials.
Casey:
The unit price of the mechanical components will be lower, allowing for more affordable price aimed at the education market, similar to the positioning of Chromebooks.
Marco:
By the way, just to clarify, Jason was not reporting this.
Marco:
Oh, sorry.
Marco:
This was reported in Digitimes, but it was behind a paywall, and Jason quoted it.
Marco:
So I quoted Jason quoting it.
Casey:
I appreciate that.
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
I'm a mess tonight.
Marco:
Jason actually kind of disagreed with it very well, so you should read his article that he wrote.
Marco:
But see, I the reason I want to talk about this is this actually it kind of piqued my interest because the idea of Apple trying to get like a radically cheaper laptop than what they have now, I think is very interesting.
Marco:
And there is definitely a market to that.
Marco:
And I find this doubly interesting because my kid just started a school where they issue every student Chromebooks.
Marco:
And so I now have some firsthand experience with, you know, the Chromebooks that students are getting in very large numbers across at least the US.
John:
Welcome.
John:
Both my children have had Chromebooks for many, many years now, and they've also broken Chromebooks.
John:
So I have lots of experience.
John:
Get ready for Chromebooks.
John:
I mean, this is one of the things that I guess if you don't have kids in school, you might not have noticed the Chromebook revolution, but it happened.
John:
They swept through the education sector.
John:
And yeah, if your kid gets issued a computer in their school, it's probably a Chromebook.
Marco:
And it goes well beyond just being issued a computer.
Marco:
And this was news to me.
Marco:
I knew Chromebooks were making massive inroads, not just inroads, but just massively taken over schools over a long time now.
Marco:
But I didn't realize.
Marco:
So my kid started the school.
Marco:
He's in middle school now.
Marco:
And
Marco:
Not only do they not bring backpacks between classes, they aren't even allowed to.
Marco:
They just carry a Chromebook and a small binder.
Marco:
There's not even textbooks and backpacks anymore.
John:
Well, that's definitely not in my schools.
John:
That may just be a local thing.
Marco:
Yeah, or maybe the textbooks are in the classroom.
Marco:
Regardless, they don't carry books around anymore.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
They don't carry textbooks.
John:
The textbooks are mostly electronic.
Marco:
That is true.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And so everything is in Google Classroom and whatever else, like, you know, whatever all those different platform tools are called.
John:
Does Adam School actually use Google Classroom?
Marco:
I think so, yeah.
Marco:
At least for some stuff, they use it.
Marco:
I don't know if they use it for everything, but they do use it.
John:
There are a couple big vendors in this space that have lots of market share.
John:
I just wondered what Google Classroom's market share is.
John:
None of my kids' schools use Google Classroom, but there's a couple other software packages that are common.
Marco:
So anyway, what I find interesting about the idea of Apple trying to get into this market is that this market is just so utterly dominated by Chromebooks.
Marco:
And they are so entrenched now.
Marco:
So you have the massive amount of cheap hardware, first of all.
Marco:
And to give some idea, I looked up the exact Chromebook that my kid was issued by the school.
Marco:
And right now, you can buy it on Amazon for...
Marco:
$230.
Marco:
The school's buying hundreds of them at once, so I'm sure they have a good bulk rate on that.
Marco:
But the retail price for one of them, for a regular person off Amazon, is $230 for an entire laptop.
Marco:
Now, it is a crappy laptop.
Marco:
The screen is dim and low resolution.
Marco:
The whole thing is creaky plastic.
Marco:
This is not a good laptop, but it is a fully functioning asterisk laptop for $230.
Marco:
When you compare that to the M1 MacBook Air, the cheapest laptop Apple sells, the retail price for education is $900.
Marco:
Again, schools don't often pay that full price.
Marco:
They have discounts.
Marco:
Also, Apple has been discounting that exact MacBook Air through retailers down to the $750 range, maybe from Amazon or Best Buy or whatever.
Marco:
Sometimes they'll do that.
Marco:
They'll dump a whole bunch out.
Marco:
So let's say they could actually sell the M1 MacBook Air for like around $750, $700 if they really wanted to.
Marco:
And that's, again, that's not the current model.
Marco:
It's the old model.
Marco:
How do you think Apple would get anywhere near $230 when they're currently at...
Marco:
seven or eight hundred dollars minimum and i think that's that's an interesting question to ask like how could they get there you know so this rumor says it'll still use metal casing but made of different materials well that there's lots of things that could mean you know it's made it's made of aluminum foil i mean what is the what is the less expensive material you can make a laptop out of that's still metal
Marco:
well it could be it could have a simpler construction process like instead maybe maybe it's not unibody or maybe you know maybe it's there's some other assembly method that's cheaper you know i agree with jason this digit times report isn't great but the it does say made of different materials yeah it also says like you know it says quote the unit price of the mechanical components will be lower i mean i guess that's like the hinge and stuff like what is that even i don't even know what that even means but
John:
Yeah, Taptic Engine or whatever.
John:
Here's the thing about this rumor, though, with the, you know, can Apple make a less expensive thing that can compete with the Chromebooks?
John:
As I think you'll see as you accompany Adam on his Chromebook journey, Google's real dominance is not the crappy laptops that your kids use, although it helps that those exist and are cheap.
John:
It's the web-based, cloud-based software that is behind them.
John:
Yeah.
John:
That is the lock-in thing.
John:
Apple has nothing that can compete with that.
John:
Apple's web-based, you know, equivalent of like, you know, even if it's as simple as like Google Docs and the fact that kids have a Google Drive, setting aside actual Google Classroom or things like Schoology or all the different, you know...
John:
not so great enterprise-y education software things.
John:
All that stuff is web-slash-cloud-based.
John:
So the purpose of the thing that your kid has is to access web-slash-cloud-based stuff, which is why a Chromebook, which runs a webOS and all the apps are web apps, makes perfect sense.
John:
Apple has nothing on the cloud side of that that can compete.
John:
Their offerings are not compelling.
John:
They're just plain not as good, which is a, you know, usually it's like, well, Apple costs more, but they're better.
John:
Apple's education stuff is not better.
John:
They don't even have anything they can compete with just plain old Google Docs.
John:
Just text, collaborative text and a webpage that kids can do stuff together.
John:
Setting aside all the other features that are way more complicated than that.
John:
Apple's like collaborative iWork stuff is miles behind plain old Google Docs.
John:
And so it's almost like the laptop part of it doesn't even matter.
John:
And why would you pay three times the price or two times the price or heck, $10 more than the Chromebook to get a nicer way to view the same exact web apps that you can see in a Chromebook?
John:
And as slow and janky as the Chromebooks are, they're good enough to load up your kid's Google Drive and look at their Google Docs and submit things to Schoology and do all the things that the kids need to do.
John:
and there's no like there's no other stuff beyond that like they don't need to run high frame rate games the kids shouldn't be playing any games anyway they don't run fancy software everything happens on the web and yes it is nicer the kids totally do play games on their chromebooks they they all figure out how i know but like like that's not the it's as far as the education marketing is starting to like our kids aren't getting high enough frame rates in their games like you could say well
John:
Don't you want them to have the cool chemistry experiment where they're going through 3D?
John:
That stuff demos well, but practically speaking, no, schools don't want to pay even $10 more for that.
John:
So I feel like Apple's, even if Apple comes out with something for $230, they're still going to be totally pushed out of the education market by Google because what schools want is give me a way for teachers to run classes and grade assignments and accept submissions and all the cloud stuff.
John:
Google and other companies do that Apple either doesn't do it all or has worse solutions for.
John:
And that is what's keeping Apple out of education, not $700 MacBook Pros or MacBook Airs or whatever.
Marco:
Yeah, I think there's so many factors here.
Marco:
I think this rumor is... First of all, I think it's unlikely to be true.
Marco:
But if it is true, I think the most interesting part is the hardware.
Marco:
To us as Apple nerds, how do they get it meaningfully different from the current Macs?
Marco:
And that whole other side of...
Marco:
the management of the fleet of them by school IT departments, how you source them, how you service them, how you repair them, what happens when a kid breaks them, how you manage the software, what are they accessing, what web services and software packages are they accessing.
John:
Because what schools would want is, oh, it's a MacBook Air, but literally the only thing you can ever see on the screen is Google Chrome.
John:
And that's a Chromebook.
John:
Yeah, because that's what schools want.
John:
They don't want kids to be able to get to the Finder and install good games and play them, you know what I mean?
John:
They want it to be a Chromebook.
John:
And even with Chromebooks, as you noted, they find a way to get Solitaire on there or find web-based games and do all sorts of... But the Mac operating system and MacBook Air, they provide...
John:
To lock them down to the degree that they would need to be locked down for school students is just so difficult.
John:
It can be done.
John:
You can do managed stuff.
John:
Everything can be controlled centrally, and you can stop them from running everything else or whatever, but that's so much more complicated than a Chromebook, which comes pre-lockdown in so many ways out of the box before you even begin actually locking it down, which, of course, you can do with Chromebooks as well.
John:
The Mac is just...
John:
too powerful like not in terms of like you know cpu although it obviously is a bazillion times faster than a chromebook but in terms of like we always talk about the ipad you can do so many things on the mac it is a general purpose computer that runs arbitrary software you have to shut off so many things before it becomes quote unquote safe for kids to use
Marco:
I do think it's interesting to think, like, if they were to try to make a lower cost, like a much lower cost laptop, you know, suppose, you know, the current ones, you know, $800, $900.
Marco:
Suppose they wanted to hit $400 or $500.
Marco:
You know, that's still twice as much as Chromebooks.
Marco:
But suppose they actually wanted to hit $400 or $500 because I can't imagine them going lower than that.
John:
even that would be very aggressive for them but it's worth thinking about like what would that be and what and what would it be so that they wouldn't lose too many macbook air sales to it that's the other thing you remember the emac like this this is apple's kind of out where it's like oh you can't buy this it's education only because they would do that for various reasons one usually in the past was back when they were actually big in schools is they would design computers specifically for the needs of schools and they didn't suit the needs of uh
John:
uh, consumers cause they would be designed for shared environments and designed for durability and certain features would be omitted.
John:
So it was like, this is tailor-made for you education and customers and consumers wouldn't be like looking at it longingly, even if it was cheaper as they'd be like, Oh, but I don't want that one.
John:
That one doesn't have what I want.
John:
But in terms of what they could do to save money on this, I don't know if they could do what they used to do with the eMac.
John:
If they made one that's cheaper, consumers would want it.
John:
They would say, but what about that one?
John:
Oh, no, no, you can't have that one.
John:
It's for education.
John:
But it looks great.
John:
I like it.
John:
It's $400.
John:
Can't I just have that one?
John:
Oh, no, you know what?
John:
That's just for schools.
John:
And, like, what is it about it that is schooly?
John:
And when we look at it.
John:
When we look at the laptops today, they have so little on them anymore.
John:
Back in the day, we were talking about all-in-one computers, the number of features and the size and the looks and the shape and how many ports.
John:
There was so much variability.
John:
But in a MacBook Air type thing, what do you think will be different about the form factor for school other than potentially being uglier and more durable, right?
John:
There are so few ports.
John:
There's just some USB-C shaped holes that screen a trackpad and a keyboard.
John:
That's what the education one would be.
John:
Maybe the case would be a little bit different, but...
John:
Here's the thing.
John:
I think when I saw this story, I'm like, you know what?
John:
Apple can pretty easily make a much cheaper but still very good laptop that everybody would want because it would be much cheaper.
John:
And the reason they can do that is mostly because of the Apple Silicon transition.
John:
And the way they do it is like if wait, wait, two years from now, I think two years from now, you could sell a plain old M1 powered laptop with a not so great screen and a not so great trackpad for four hundred dollars and still make 30 percent margins.
John:
And an M1 three years from now, still really good.
John:
Like compared to what's in the Chromebook, still perfectly fine for web browsing.
John:
Still like just that's the Tim Cook principle.
John:
How long can we keep selling M1 based laptops?
John:
I think for a pretty long time, especially if your bar is Chromebook.
John:
And so when does an M1-based laptop with a not-so-great screen and trackpad become $400?
John:
Only a few years from now, I think, with 40% margins, only a few years from now.
John:
So there is an obvious way to do that.
John:
I still don't think Apple will do it, but they could do it.
Marco:
Obviously, the iPad is the big elephant in this room.
Marco:
The base model iPad is about $300.
Marco:
That's in Chromebook territory, but that's also just the iPad, no case, no keyboard.
Marco:
And we've seen Apple attempt to, and maybe succeed, I'm not sure, I don't know to what degree, but
Marco:
We've seen Apple address the educational market with the iPad with these kind of cases they've kind of co-designed with Logitech to be like the educational case.
Marco:
And it's this big rubbery thing and has a built-in keyboard and can be used in a standardized test and stuff like that.
Marco:
We've seen them kind of attack this market from the iPad end.
Marco:
And I think it's interesting that, you know, that that is much closer in price to Chromebooks.
Marco:
You'd still be looking at about double once you throw in a keyboard and stuff, but that's at least closer.
Marco:
And so I wonder if the way to attack this problem, if they wanted to, if they want, suppose they want to hit 400 bucks.
Marco:
Maybe they actually start from the iPad and work their way up rather than starting from the Mac and working their way down.
Marco:
Now, I think you're right that the M1 is a closer fit, though.
John:
Like the Chromebook, by the way, is in the iPad.
John:
They're closer to each other in terms of exposed capabilities.
John:
It is harder to screw up an iPad.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
And it's easier to lock an iPad down.
Marco:
Yeah, and it's easier to centrally manage a whole bunch of iPads and everything.
Marco:
There are certain clear advantages there that Apple has been selling to education.
Marco:
It's not that the iPad doesn't sell to education.
Marco:
They've been doing that for a long time.
Marco:
So we see that strategy.
Marco:
We see how it works.
Marco:
We see what it's good for and what it's not so good for.
Marco:
We see how it loses to Chromebooks in certain ways and how it beats Chromebooks in certain ways.
Marco:
But I think if you built a Mac...
Marco:
similarly to how you would build a low-end iPad with just you know with a permanent keyboard and you know a hinge and everything like make it a laptop shell with mostly iPad guts I think you could hit those price ranges running iPad OS see I don't know maybe running iPad OS maybe not maybe iPad OS is probably what they would do you know in part to avoid the cannibalization angle and in part because it is probably better managed for this kind of purpose
John:
Yeah, it's a more appropriate functional surface for education because all this different stuff that the Mac can do is not relevant to education unless you're talking about like a computer science class in high school.
Marco:
Yeah, I think ultimately the best way for Apple to even attempt to attack this problem is probably an iPad that is its own permanent laptop.
Marco:
You don't have to attach a case and keyboard to an iPad.
John:
You're talking about the E-Mate.
John:
The E-Mate strategy.
John:
You remember the E-Mate?
John:
You don't remember the E-Mate.
John:
Do you know about the E-Mate retroactively?
Yeah.
Marco:
It was a Newton with a permanently attached keyboard, essentially, made for education, thus the E. With today's iPad hardware and running iPadOS as the OS for it, I think if Apple wants to actually attack Chromebooks, first of all, they're never going to replace Chromebooks because everything we mentioned a few minutes ago, there's this whole ecosystem around them that Apple would not be able to compete with in terms of software and services and
John:
They basically be selling it like, you can use our amazing apps and also, you know, through the web browser access, the thing that runs your entire school, which is Google slash Schoology slash whatever.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
They're not going to really compete well with Chromebooks, but they could at least do the Apple thing and
Marco:
find a high-end and capture that.
Marco:
That's usually what Apple does with most of their products.
Marco:
Most of their products do not dominate their categories.
Marco:
Usually their products are the high-end version that takes a lot of the profit and the high-end profitable shares, but it doesn't really compete with all the commodity stuff at the bottom of the market.
John:
And to that end, since my kids have had Chromebooks for all these years, it did take them a while, but both of them, I guess probably around sophomore year of high school,
John:
did the thing which is like can i not use the chromebook but instead use one of the fancy laptops that my parents have because they have lots of money they asked they asked is there a laptop i can use instead of the chromebook for years they didn't care like chromebook whatever school whatever blah blah blah but eventually and they don't let me tell you that neither one of these kids my kids cares about computers at all in terms of like the hardware or whatever but even eventually they could tell
John:
Chromebooks are, the screen doesn't look great.
John:
They're slow.
John:
Maybe they just wanted to play better games.
John:
I don't know.
John:
But either way, they asked.
John:
And so practically speaking, my daughter, who's a junior now, takes an M1 MacBook Air with her to school and does not use her Chromebook ever.
John:
Except on certain testing days when you have to quote unquote have to use the Chromebook because the test is like, you know, it's kind of like you're allowed to bring a certain calculator to like the whatever.
John:
That's what the Chromebooks are.
John:
That's kind of the obligatory.
John:
So she still has a Chromebook, I think.
John:
Although my school is also trying to save money and saying if your kid doesn't need a Chromebook, like we won't issue them one and we'll just give them one for standardized testing or whatever.
John:
But.
John:
anyway the apple thing is like if your parents have money you can be one of the rich kids and not have to slum it with the chromebook because you'll bring your own you know ridiculously over spec'd expensive fancy apple laptop which you use to run chrome and access the same web pages everyone else is accessing but you know the solitaire game you can play in the background during class is way nicer and
Casey:
so watch for that for adam how long does it take him to say dad our house is filled with laptops do i have to use this chromebook or can i bring points to one of the 17 laptops in the house that one to school with me and then you can have a fun conversation no i think the more important question is at what point does adam become the bullshit reason that marco has to get a new laptop he has to get a new laptop because oh adam needs one
John:
I think it's already happened because doesn't do the thing.
John:
We're like rotating iPads down to Adam soon.
John:
Adam's going to have phones like just this is it's no hero.
Marco:
He rotates iPads down to me.
Marco:
He's the iPad power user in the house.
Marco:
Tiff and Adam both almost always have iPads that are better than mine.
Marco:
Oftentimes I don't even have an iPad because if something goes wrong with Adams, I swap mine for his as I have his, you know, sent for repair or whatever.
Marco:
So like oftentimes I don't even have one.
John:
adam's got the big fancy gaming laptop right or is that is that supposedly tiffs i don't remember we each have a fancy gaming i wouldn't i wouldn't describe it as big and they aren't that fancy but yeah they're like you know the 15 inch razor you know low-end gpu versions it'll be interesting since he already has quote-unquote his laptop it'll be interesting to see if he asks you can i bring my gaming laptop to school
Marco:
oh it's way too heavy and big for he wouldn't it's being protected by the fact that it's monstrous and the battery lasts 10 minutes yeah the chromebook i think it's like an 11 or 11 or 12 inch screen you know it's it's fine let me know when he first breaks it it's a rite of passage
Marco:
Thank you.
Marco:
Thank you.
Marco:
We have in the past work with HelloFresh.
Marco:
Green Chef is now owned by HelloFresh.
Marco:
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Casey:
All right, let's do some Ask ATP.
Casey:
Joe Lyon asks, in a recent discussion about USB-C, one of you mentioned that in the next 10 years, the USB-C port will be the limiter in phone thickness.
Casey:
Maybe this wasn't just, but it sounded serious.
Casey:
Is there any reason to actually think that?
Casey:
Apple has shown no desire, or at least no ability, to shrink thickness in the past 10 years and seemed to be content at between 7 and 8 millimeters for the body of the phone.
Casey:
There's an image that we will put in the show notes that apparently somebody else had put together.
Casey:
Nevertheless, the popular assumption has always seemed to be, quote, eventually our phones will be as thin as credit cards, quote.
Casey:
But is that based on anything other than sci-fi depictions in the future?
Casey:
Has anyone actually demonstrated R&D for future tech where battery, chips, hardware, taptic engine...
Casey:
Other ports and switches, etc., the screen, and not to mention the camera, fit in a package of 4mm or less, much less the 2-3mm.
Casey:
I feel like in discussions of future phones, we often veer too far into what we think must be possible in the future just because of advances we've made in the past without considering what really are bound to be physical and practical limitations at some point.
Marco:
I don't think we're going to go massively thinner than what we have now for the foreseeable future for a number of reasons.
Marco:
The biggest of which is camera optics.
Marco:
We see as the camera plateau keeps getting larger and they keep protruding further and now we're having to turn the optics sideways just to fit some of them in or whatever.
Marco:
We see...
Marco:
That is such a driving force behind phone advances and not only what people get excited about and why they buy phones, but what they want out of their phones.
Marco:
People want their phones to be amazing cameras, and they want them to have pretty good battery life.
Marco:
And that's just going to result in a lot of stuff being crammed in.
Marco:
We already see that...
Marco:
People want basically the biggest phone they can hold in their hands and fit in their pockets width and height-wise, and then they want a certain amount of thickness behind it to house a really big camera and whatever the most battery is that we can throw in there.
Marco:
And so there really is not a lot of market pressure to make phones thinner at the expense of battery life and camera optics.
Marco:
The idea that things must get thinner and lighter forever is in part, not entirely, but in part predicated on the assumption that we hate these things.
Marco:
Eventually, you make things smaller and people are like, oh, thank God I can carry less of this bulky work computer that I hate.
Marco:
People love their phones, and they love their phones being great cameras, and they love their phones having decent battery life.
Marco:
There really is not a massive amount of demand to try to shrink them thinner and thinner and thinner.
Marco:
There was that demand back in the days of the Razer phones in the early 2000s.
Marco:
There was that demand because cell phones back then didn't do that much.
Marco:
They were much simpler devices.
Marco:
They didn't have any meaningful camera optics to speak of.
Marco:
Back then, it was like, all right, this phone is not doing much for me.
Marco:
I want this to be as small and light as possible because it isn't that important of a part of my life.
Marco:
And it's not doing that much that would justify bigger things.
Marco:
That's not true anymore.
Marco:
Today, phones are cameras, number one.
Marco:
And they also do a whole bunch of all this other stuff.
Marco:
And so I don't think anybody is really demanding, I want my phone to start disappearing out of my life and getting smaller.
Marco:
No, that's not what anybody wants.
Marco:
People want their phones to be bigger and do more.
Marco:
So I don't think the market is going to go in that direction for the foreseeable future where we're being pressured to shrink phones super thin at the expense of all those other factors that people actually care a lot about.
John:
I don't think that's what this question was asking, though.
John:
I think it was saying, like, you know, why do we think that they'll eventually be thin?
John:
Is it just because we see that in sci-fi movies?
John:
Or, you know, there's two parts to this.
John:
One is, like, how could we possibly get there?
John:
Like, are there any advances over the horizon that... And by the way, I'll contest the idea that we said definitively that within 10 years, the USB-C port would be a limiter.
John:
I think we probably said something like, especially if I said it, it may become the limiter at some point, maybe in the next 10 years.
John:
Lots of qualifiers.
John:
But anyway, why do we think that's even a thing?
John:
Like, why...
John:
you know, again, other than seeing it in sci-fi movies, because every sci-fi movie and TV shows some shows that these days show somebody using something that is essentially an iPhone, but it's usually transparent, which is dumb, but you know, sci-fi thing, but it's always thinner and lighter.
John:
It's like, it's basically like a piece of plexiglass that they use CG on top of or whatever.
John:
Um,
John:
and that part of it i think is legit and that's the reason i think that the usbc port could become the limiter in thickness again assuming ports don't disappear before that because that's you know obvious thing that a ports could disappear and be you know something else could replace the phone the the visual aspect of the phone like glasses or whatever but anyway setting that aside assuming those things don't thwart this idea the reason that thinness of a phone
John:
if possible without compromises we'll get to in a second is a thing that's still worth pursuing is marco should know better than anybody they feel big in your pants man you put it in your pocket they're heavy they're big they're inflexible uh you want that big screen but when the max is in your shorts pocket it feels a little bit big
John:
And if I could tell you, OK, but you can have the iPhone Max, but it'll be half the weight and also bendable and a little bit thinner.
John:
And when you put it in your pants pocket, it would feel more like you had like a very thin paperback book in there instead of a solid, you know, fragile brick thing.
John:
You'd say, yeah, sign me up.
John:
I think there is room to go within the traditional phone form factor for it to be both lighter and thinner and also more flexible.
John:
Not a piece of paper, because then you can't hold it.
John:
Those are the practical considerations.
John:
Like, it can't be too thin because then it becomes uncomfortable to hold.
John:
But we could definitely go thinner than we have now, and we can definitely go lighter.
John:
Now, with current technology, do we want to go thinner and lighter?
John:
We want to go a little bit lighter.
John:
Titanium.
John:
Marco likes that.
John:
But we probably don't want to go thinner because that sacrifices battery.
John:
So the next part of the question is, OK, if I agree that, yeah, the phone could be a little bit thinner and lighter and people would like it like they're not begging for it, they're not dying for it, but people would like it, especially people with long memories like.
John:
The Motorola Razr was less obtrusive in your pocket than any modern phone because it was just smaller.
John:
Yeah, it was way thicker.
John:
The Motorola Razr was thicker than an iPhone, but length and width wise, it didn't have a screen.
John:
It was so tiny.
John:
So in terms of how much are you aware of this item in your pockets or in your clothing or whatever, the Razr was less obtrusive than this.
John:
So given that we have to have these big screens, how do you make something this big less obtrusive?
John:
A little bit thinner, a little bit lighter, right?
John:
Are there any technologies out there that could get us there?
John:
Camera things is a big problem.
John:
We don't have any good technologies on the horizon for cameras, but the possibility of not having to deal with the optical stuff for the cameras...
John:
periscope helps a little bit although not as much as you would think but technologies like the uh a more advanced version of those light field cameras that have like a million different lenses on them whatever if you could imagine we've talked about this in past shows ages ago the entire back of the phone being a giant flat light sensor of some kind using a technology like imagine the entire back of the phone is like a giant cmos sensor not literally but you know i mean that type of thing where
John:
It's just a different way to capture light than any of our current technology, like a different approach.
John:
It's not like, oh, can we make current cameras smaller, tiny little pieces of glass or plastic that focus light beams onto a little sensor?
John:
What if we took an entirely different approach to cameras?
John:
That's the only way you're going to get a breakthrough that allows us to get that thin.
John:
And you'd also need a breakthrough in battery technology because, and that I think is closer.
John:
Like we can say, okay, solid state batteries, which are always five years over the horizon, they have better energy density.
John:
Some of them have better energy density than current lithium ion things.
John:
You're not going to get much thinner without destroying battery life unless...
John:
everything in the phone takes up less power which is probably not going to happen because you need to emit the photons for the screen and there's some minimum amount of light that that takes or you have a different battery technology so maybe you know 10 years that's the saying everyone overestimates what you can do in a year and underestimates what can happen in 10 years right 10 years the camera problem isn't going to be solved but
John:
In 10 years, there could be a battery breakthrough that lets our phones get one or two millimeters thinner and then USB-C is kind of tight.
John:
If tapered phones become a thing for fashion reasons, again, I don't recommend this, but if Apple decided that they wanted to have a tapered phone and they'd say, no, we can't have a USB-C port on it, they would just go with no ports, honestly.
John:
But you can quibble about the time horizon, but the reason I think the pursuit of thinner phones...
John:
is out there in the future if not our future because we'll be dead is because yeah they could stand to be a little bit thinner and a little bit lighter uh and if they're not superseded by glasses like we don't have to look at this rectangle anymore because the images are just in front of our eyes you know if that if that doesn't happen eventually these things that we carry with us will be thinner and lighter
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Chris Cast writes, do you guys ever use the MagSafe charger on your M1 or M2 MacBook Pros, or do you just use USB-C charging?
Casey:
I think I've used MagSafe twice in the last 18 months that I've had the computer, and both of these times were in the first week I had it.
Casey:
For me, I...
Casey:
Don't use MagSafe around the house.
Casey:
Generally speaking, my computer is plugged into the CalDigit TS4 dock, which is part of the reason why I was a little surprised that Marco doesn't have a dock, but we went through why that isn't already.
Casey:
The Caldigit provides something like 96 watts of charging.
Casey:
Occasionally, if I'm working on the back porch, I now, thanks to one Marco Arment, I have a much better portable porch monitor.
Casey:
Well, mildly portable porch monitor than I've ever had before.
Casey:
And coincidentally, I don't think we talked about it on the show, but I sent Marco a picture of, or it might have been Marco and John,
Casey:
A picture of me using the Ultrafine 5K on the back porch with the MagSafe thing plugged in.
Casey:
And Marco asked me why the hell I was doing that.
Casey:
And I was very confused until I remembered, oh, the Ultrafine also provides power.
Casey:
So around the house, I almost never use it.
Casey:
But pretty much any time I'm working from somewhere else, like the power supply cable that I use, that I keep in my laptop bag, is the MagSafe cable.
Casey:
So earlier today, I was at a local library.
Casey:
We are very lucky here that we have just truly phenomenal libraries.
Casey:
And I was using MagSafe cable literally 12 hours ago.
Casey:
So that's what I'm doing.
Casey:
John, you don't believe in laptops.
Casey:
So Marco, what do you do?
Marco:
At my desk, my desktop laptop is powered by the monitor, as mentioned, so I don't need one there.
Marco:
I do have a MagSafe charger in my office for my laptop laptops to charge.
Marco:
When I travel, I don't bother with MagSafe.
Marco:
When I travel, I just use USB-C just because I don't usually need every single one of my ports all the time when traveling.
Marco:
But whenever I'm somewhere, like if I'm setting up like
Marco:
some kind of you know av setup where i'm doing something with a laptop that's using that's going to use a bunch of its ports then i will use magsafe because it gets me a port it gets me an extra port you know um but otherwise for the most part like you know i use it sometimes but i don't use it most of the time and not when traveling but i'm glad it's there for the times i do need it for the extra port
John:
I'm not a laptop person, but if I were, I would be all in on MagSafe.
John:
I have one laptop that it's not my laptop, but it is the laptop that I use.
John:
It's basically I use it for booted into Monterey to do Monterey testing.
John:
It's I'm keeping it on Ventura to do Ventura testing.
John:
It's kind of like a dev thing to me.
John:
It's just sitting in the same room with me.
John:
It's sitting on a desk.
John:
It never moves.
John:
It doesn't even have MagSafe because it's a 2018 MacBook Air, but it has always had a thing that I bought for it, which is one of those little fake MagSafe USB.
John:
You shove it into the USB-C port and it's got a little magnet on it.
John:
That's how much I wanted MagSafe.
John:
I was putting it on my laptops before MagSafe even came back to them.
John:
I think the reason a lot of people end up not using it is because they don't care enough about it to buy...
John:
presumably probably pretty expensive MagSafe chargers.
John:
And all around the house, what do you have?
John:
You have USB-C chargers for your USB-C devices, and none of those have MagSafe.
John:
The only thing that has MagSafe is Apple laptops.
John:
So unless you love it so much that every place you're going to bring that laptop, you're going to go out and buy another MagSafe thing, which is hard to integrate into whatever charging stuff because it's got its own brick and all that crap.
John:
People aren't going to do that.
John:
I think that's why MagSafe gets less use because it only comes with one in the box and you put that one somewhere.
John:
But if your laptops are portable and if you're anywhere else with that laptop, you either have to lug the MagSafe thing for you or you care so much that you buy them and sprinkle them throughout the house.
John:
If I was a laptop person, I would buy MagSafe things for every single position in the house because I like the idea.
John:
I like that.
Casey:
i like magsafe i like sticking it on with a magnet i like yanking it off i like not worrying about if the cords are going to get caught i give it a big thumbs up but i don't like laptop so it's not relevant jack mordage writes i have always used light themes because to my eyes they were the default in almost any app mac or ios lately i have found more and more apps that start with a dark theme like visual studio code for example and i'm wondering if maybe i'm the one that lives in the past are you light or dark theme users uh for me
Casey:
I think I, too, am living in the past, much like John with his wired mouse.
Casey:
But I use the auto settings, so roundabouts of sundown.
Casey:
All of my devices switch to dark mode.
Casey:
And then during the day, I use light mode.
Casey:
But it seems like the kids these days are all in on dark mode.
Casey:
I don't particularly understand that personally.
Casey:
But as one of the three olds on this program, I will swap back and forth automatically based on time of day.
Casey:
I think I picked on Marco first last time.
Casey:
So, John, what do you do?
John:
I mean, I think the explanation of why kids like dark theme is very easy because it's cool because things are dark.
John:
It's like dark, like Batman and like the black book.
Casey:
That's what the kids are saying.
John:
That's no, that's absolutely why one of the reasons why people like dark.
John:
The other obviously is eyestrain.
John:
You don't have a bunch of bright light shining your face is the reason you like to go dark at night Like, you know, it's nighttime.
John:
It's time for everything to be less lights in my face, right?
John:
So that makes sense for me I've said this before the part of the revolution of the Mac part of the thing that drew me to it so much is because in the beginning of the personal computer age every personal computer I used was a black screen with you know green or amber text on it so it was like the computer by default is
John:
It was black.
John:
It was a void.
John:
And then light up things would come.
John:
Light up lines, light up text, you know, initially monochrome, right?
John:
That was how computers worked.
John:
And the Mac was the first thing to flip that.
John:
The Mac, in addition to all its artsy-fartsy proportional fonts and Mac paint or whatever, the whole point of the Mac is...
John:
like a sheet of paper it's white by default and then the text the lines everything on it is dark and that was like hey i know that from books and life where the paper we have is white and if you open up a book the paper is white and the letters are black and i can see you know i didn't know what a proportional font was or a serif was but i could say this mac screen it looks like a book because books have dark text on a light background and books have text that looks like that too and
John:
And that was like a light switch.
John:
It was like computers aren't just a big black void where green letters appear.
John:
Computers can do everything that you can do in the real world.
John:
It's just that you can erase as many times as you want and you never wear through the paper.
John:
So from that point on, I was 100% in on...
John:
white window dark text and i have never looked back even when i when i got you know first experience like the x window system uh you know at school and like all the default x themes for the window managers and stuff or various inverted or you know dark type things changed them all to white background with black text and that's where i am to this day i never used dark mode for anything the only exception is on my phone
John:
which I'm much more apt to use, like say in a dark bed before I go to bed.
John:
No, you're not supposed to.
John:
Don't tell me about it.
John:
My Twitter apps have always been dark.
John:
And even on the Mac, Twitterific on the Mac or Ivory on the Mac, those are always in dark mode.
John:
I don't know why.
John:
Is it because Twitterific shipped by default?
John:
Twitter's a dark place.
John:
Back when Twitter was great and we loved it.
John:
In 2006, 2007, whenever Twitterific came out, that was its default theme.
John:
And I am a creature of habit.
John:
And so whenever I'm doing anything Twitter-like on the Mac or on my phone, dark mode always.
John:
But everything else, light mode.
Casey:
What about terminals?
Casey:
light light light always that's what i'm saying like when i was using x terms right uh he was like nope i got to change that it's got to be black text on a white background right everyone else's x terms were the reverse of that but not me my terminal on the mac white windows black text yeah that's funny because even in the only light mode was the only mode was light mode uh in mac os up until you know a few releases ago and i would always make my terminals black background with white text on top of it anyway marco what do you do
Marco:
Kind of what John does so I have my phone auto switch you know with sunset or whatever nighttime whatever so because you know my phone that actually I am likely to be using my phone you know at night in dimly lit areas and I like I appreciate that difference.
Marco:
The problem with dark mode on the desktop for me or on any Mac is that what I am doing on Macs is often content that is inherently going to be light.
Marco:
So whether it's working on basic document stuff, like spreadsheets or whatever, or just web pages.
Marco:
So many web pages assume light mode and don't even have dark mode.
Marco:
And yes, I know some of the ones that I am responsible for are some of these web pages.
But...
Marco:
But anyway, so many webpages assume light mode.
Marco:
And to me, the kind of mixed window environment of a Mac, and not as mixed as John's maybe, but the many-windowed environment of a Mac, I think it just works better with everything being light mode.
Marco:
And like John, I am light everywhere on the Mac.
Marco:
I have light terminal windows like John, which everyone else, all other programmers besides me and John, think this is like blasphemy.
Marco:
You have white background with black text in your terminal windows.
John:
What?
John:
Still the default in Apple Terminal, I believe.
John:
You get a box stock Apple Terminal, you launch it.
John:
I think Xcode asks you now, do you want light or dark theme?
John:
But Terminal does not.
John:
Terminal defaults to white windows with black text, I think.
Marco:
yeah all of my editors all everything i do in the mac is light background you know all the different every app that that has an option for dark mode i don't use it like on the mac it is it is all light it's blindingly bright i run the xdr at its full brightness all of the time oh my well that's a lot i don't think i do that let me see what level i'm on hang on
John:
Oh, I'm not even at 50%.
John:
Yeesh.
Marco:
It is 10 p.m.
Marco:
It's dark outside and I'm at full brightness.
John:
Oh, that's too much.
John:
That's too much.
John:
I mean, I am in a dimly lit room, but yet I don't crank it up that much.
John:
I think I do have the auto.
John:
Do you have the auto brightness thing on your XDR?
Marco:
No, I turn that off.
John:
Oh, no.
Marco:
In all fairness, I do keep my office very well lit.
Marco:
The room in is pretty brightly lit most of the time.
Marco:
During the day, it's very brightly lit.
Marco:
And then at night, I keep it medium brightness.
John:
yeah i can't believe you because maximum brightness for non hdr mode i believe is like 600 nits for the xdr it's 500 but it's it isn't it isn't that ridiculous oh yeah it was on my wife's studio display i think that one is 600 at max and the reason i notice it is because her window at a certain time in the morning the sun comes through like the slats in the shade and directly hits the light sensor
John:
In our studio display.
John:
And so if you're sitting using your computer, all of a sudden the screen goes room and goes to maximum 600 minutes.
John:
You're like, Oh my God, why is this happening?
John:
And you're like, Oh, the sun.
John:
Right.
John:
Cause you can see this tiny speck of sun lands just on the light sensor.
John:
I do like the audio adjusting.
John:
Cause that's the other aspect of like a lot of, why a lot of people use dark mode.
John:
and they complain when, like, a white window appears because it blows their, you know, eyeballs out, right?
John:
If your, you know, if your pupils dilate because it's like everything is dim and then one white window appears, it can ruin your day.
John:
Whereas I feel like I'm protected from that by being in light mode all the time.
John:
My pupils are more constricted because, I mean, granted, I have it on half brightness, but, like, there's...
John:
They never really dilate to the point where one white window is going to pop in.
John:
So a black window pops up on my screen does not hurt my eyeball.
John:
So that's just I mean, that's just what I'm more comfortable with.
John:
I know a lot of people use light mode and dark mode depending on because it is actually a comfort and accessibility issue.
John:
For me, I think it's mostly just preference.
John:
But I do notice the few times I've actually tried like legit dark mode, even on my phone or my iPad.
Marco:
you know i i recognize people's complaint you try to be in dark mode and then you load one of marco's websites that he didn't do dark mode for you're like oh i can't see anything uh and that never happens in light mode yeah and that also never happens on iphones nearly as often like it you know on the iphone you are mostly in different apps not so much in the web browser and you're running one thing at a time full screen so like i feel like it's easier on the iphone to maintain darkness when it's when you're in dark mode
John:
and the big i found the bigger not that i have a lot of experience this but my short experience is the bigger and more important the website is less likely they are to support dark mode so my dinky blog that i post on twice a year supports dark mode does amazon.com i seriously doubt it although i'm sure we'll find out as soon as i said these words
John:
Casey can check.
John:
Please check, Casey.
John:
Because you're in dark mode right now.
Casey:
Well, but the thing is, is that I was just about to say, I use an app called Noir, N-O-I-R, that does a really good best guess at what a dark mode style sheet would look like for websites that don't have their own dark mode.
Casey:
And so my Amazon looks like it supports dark mode, but based on what I'm seeing from Noir, it's Noir doing it.
Casey:
It's not
Casey:
Amazon doing it.
John:
No, it absolutely does not.
John:
I just turned on dark mode and these products are all in a white background.
Casey:
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
So, Noir, we'll put a link in the show notes.
Casey:
I think I got this from Gruber potentially years ago, but it's very, very good.
Casey:
It works on iOS, iPadOS.
Casey:
I don't remember if it's different purchases or universal, but one way or another, it works on all the major Apple platforms that have web browsers.
Casey:
So I definitely recommend it.
Casey:
It's the only way that I can use dark mode and ever open Safari because otherwise it's a nightmare.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Green Chef, Trade Coffee, and Squarespace.
Marco:
And thanks to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join us at atp.fm slash join, and we will talk to you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
And if you're into Twitter...
Marco:
You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-
John:
I think you two should reproduce the window dragon bug in the after show.
John:
No, absolutely not.
Marco:
While I'm running the broadcast?
John:
No, absolutely not.
John:
Like I said, you shouldn't be afraid of it because it is not a thing that overloads your system.
John:
It's not a load-based thing.
Casey:
Can I switch users?
John:
No, you don't need to switch users.
John:
You can do it with single users.
John:
It's just harder.
Casey:
I'm not opening 150 windows like you do, John.
Casey:
I'm not doing that.
John:
Sure, it'll be super fun.
Casey:
I have too much empathy for the machine, John.
John:
This is like peer pressure.
John:
Take these drugs.
John:
It's not going to hurt the machine.
John:
The machine does not care about the windows.
Marco:
I care about the windows.
John:
I guess at a certain point, the backing stores are going to use lots of RAM.
John:
But anyway, you've got plenty of RAM.
Marco:
you can do it it'll it'll hurt my soul i i'm not going exactly i'm not going to do this during a broadcast when i have a live recording running oh you're so afraid you can stop the recording and commit the file to disk and start a new recording wow a little little no i'm then then you're going to mess up my sync operation later no i don't want to do what what are we what are we looking to establish like i don't doubt that i could i just want you i just want you to feel it i just want you to experience it phrasing phrasing
John:
uh i okay so how would i go about doing this without adding any other users oh god don't mess up the recording please okay casey mess up a recording what are you talking about he's got so many backups he's fine yeah that's never happened the hardware recorder's running all right so what do i do just mash on command n a thousand times do you just open up text edit uh and then well first of all when you open up text edit this is an interesting when you open text edit does it open any windows or do you get the open save dialogue
John:
no i get the open save dialogue okay well just hit cancel and then uh you're just gonna hold down command n sir and what you're gonna see is a line of windows that say untitled one untitled two untitled three so you'll know exactly how many you open so maybe stop around 50 first oh my god oh i already went to 70 sorry all right all right so now i just drag around just grab one of those windows and move it around how's it feeling for you
John:
totally fine and by the way i have two 5k monitors and my laptop screen all open right now it doesn't that none of that matters do you have third-party ram installed no this is a laptop god no i i did did it i did hardware diagnostics when i was doing the hardware thing i ran the hardware diagnostic on my mac pro like i was when i was thinking it's got to be hardware
John:
Everything has had such a spring clean.
John:
Okay, go to 150.
Casey:
All right, 80, 90, 100.
John:
Look how fast it opens them.
John:
It's nothing.
John:
It's nothing to your computer.
Casey:
20, 130, 140, 150.
Casey:
God, I hate this.
Casey:
152.
Casey:
I stopped a little too soon.
Casey:
It's still fine.
John:
Yeah, I think 152, you should be able to perceive something.
John:
Give it a real good way.
John:
Here's the thing.
John:
Trackpads do a little bit of smoothing.
John:
They may be messing you up.
John:
But take a look at where the cursor is in the title bar.
John:
Click somewhere and see.
Casey:
Oh, yeah, OK.
Casey:
I'm losing.
Casey:
I'm migrating off of the title bar over time.
Casey:
But the response rate is so good.
Casey:
You know what?
John:
Actually, if you were to log into a second user now, it would be fully on.
John:
But I know you can't do that.
John:
So go to 300.
John:
No, I'll stop at 200 first.
John:
Thank you very much.
John:
This is like driving when the gas tank is on E to see how far you can go.
John:
Oh, no.
Casey:
Got to keep going, Casey.
Casey:
Let's see.
Casey:
Okay, 200.
Casey:
All right, here we go.
Casey:
I'm going to put my cursor over the U. This will do much better with the visual aid, but here we are.
Casey:
All right, here we go.
Marco:
This is the worst podcast.
Casey:
I'm definitely getting some significant migration from the pointer.
John:
The jumpiness is what you'll probably start to notice first.
Casey:
I don't notice really any jumpiness.
Casey:
It's just I notice that where I put the mouse cursor inside the U and Untitled, and it doesn't take a lot of squiggling about before it moves.
John:
All right.
John:
So stop your recording, switch to a different account, and come back.
John:
No.
John:
No, we're not doing that.
Casey:
I'm not doing that.
John:
that's why next week i'll have to have you guys log into a second account before we begin recording because you'd be you'd be fully into it at this point with the second user logged in i don't know my computer isn't a piece of and it seems to be just fine no you like i said the second user is not like it it is not just like a multiplying factor like all right here we go baby 250 let's keep going all right 210 220 this is nuts 230 i don't know when it will stop you i've never done more than 300
Casey:
These windows are opening awfully slowly.
Casey:
I will say that.
Casey:
Oh, I actually, I overshot.
Casey:
I went to 251.
John:
It also makes you kind of wish the animation wasn't there.
John:
Like how much time is it spending just doing the animation slowing down?
Casey:
I mean, again, it's still, I'm not debating.
Casey:
I'm not trying to say that you're wrong or a liar or anything like that.
Marco:
Just your computer sucks.
Casey:
My cursor is definitely migrating, including off of the title bar from time to time.
Casey:
But in terms of jumpiness or whatever.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So when you're done with the recording, log into a second user, log back to this one, grab one of those windows.
John:
You will see a big difference.
Casey:
I will not, sir.
Casey:
I'm stopping at 300 in just a second.
Casey:
275.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Just leave them.
John:
Just leave them there.
Casey:
No, I'm not.
Casey:
290.
John:
You should go on activity monitor to see how much RAM text edit is using now.
Casey:
Oh, I way overshot because I hit the end button way too many times.
Casey:
All right, hold on.
Casey:
Activity monitor.
Casey:
If my computer doesn't die and if this recording is actually good, I will be very surprised.
Marco:
Yeah, please don't ruin the recording.
Marco:
I don't want to have to deal with a weird re-syncing.
Marco:
Oh, God.
Casey:
Let's see.
Casey:
Memory.
Casey:
TextEdit is using less than a gigabyte of memory.
John:
Look at that.
John:
And sort by CPU now.
John:
How much CPU is TextEdit using?
Casey:
uh 16.9 there were other things there were several other things that were using more so all right anyway let me start dragging some windows no it's fine john it's it's fine leave them there go along into a second account no no we're not doing that now when you're done with the recording no i'm not doing that i don't even have another account on this machine
John:
You don't have another account.
Casey:
No, that's not that common.
Casey:
Well, then why are you doing that?
Casey:
Cursor is definitely migrating way off the title bar now.
John:
How far can you get it off the title bar?
John:
Can you get it like three inches off?
Casey:
How high can you get, man?
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
I'm quitting text edit at 309 windows.
Casey:
This is just bananas.
Marco:
Oh, no, you should have closed the windows.
Marco:
What are you doing?
Marco:
That when you relaunched text edit, are they going to all reopen?
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
Wait, wait, how do I?
John:
What command?
John:
Command option W before you quit.
John:
Okay, so you'll thank me.
John:
oh my gosh but the fun thing is when you launch text editor it has 300 windows open you see all the shadows appear first and then the windows pop in it's really weird all right i think i think i've successfully cleaned everything up thank you sir that would have been very bad and i would it would have been great like next time you just open some random document
John:
that's what happens that stressed you out but it did not stress your computer your computer could handle it just fine it stressed out your co-host marco with his mighty computer wouldn't even try it not while i'm recording a podcast with that said mighty computer no i'm saying it's not going to stress anything oh
Casey:
So the question is, do I have enough confidence in my superior tier $17,000 computer laptop?
Casey:
Actually, can we not agree, Marco, that this is yet more proof that laptops are superior to desktops?
John:
That's what it seems like.
John:
I don't think that's relevant at all.
John:
I'm pretty sure that's what we just thought.
John:
If I had that M2 Ultra Mac Pro.